


just you.

by crossingwinter



Series: Irresponsible Storytelling [20]
Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Some of these are very smutty while others are very gen so proceed accordingly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-02-26 06:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 107
Words: 70,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13229922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: A collection of short fics originally posted toTumblrPillowfort.  Ratings and 'verses will vary, and will be given in the notes at the beginning of each chapter.





	1. hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [politicalmamaduck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/gifts), [merrymegtargaryen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/gifts), [meritmut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/gifts), [LarirenShadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LarirenShadow/gifts), [pythia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pythia/gifts), [TheLannisterBastard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLannisterBastard/gifts), [aionimica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aionimica/gifts), [lilithsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithsaur/gifts), [reylocalligraphy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylocalligraphy/gifts), [OccasionallyCreative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/gifts), [kuresoto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuresoto/gifts), [Ever-so-reylo (Ever_So_Reylo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ever_So_Reylo/gifts), [thewayofthetrashcompactor (BriarLily)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BriarLily/gifts), [jeeno2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/gifts), [rissanox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rissanox/gifts), [MissCoppelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCoppelia/gifts), [Lightshinebright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightshinebright/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergent, reylo baby

there’s fear in his eyes when he looks at her and for a moment she wonders about what he dreamed.  

he tries not to dream, works himself to the point of collapse one way or another to keep his sleep empty.  but it doesn’t always work and he’ll wake up shuddering and in a cold sweat, pulling himself away from her, away from everything, a black cloud stirring deep in his soul as he forgets.

“it’s just a dream,” she tells him.  “ben, it’s all right.  it’s just a dream.”

usually the sound of her saying his name will call him.  he likes it when she calls him ben.  it’s still strange coming from his mother, and those that know who he is sometimes refuse to call him anything at all.  for rey, and for general organa, they’ll  _try_  to tolerate him.  and ben knows that.  

but it’s different now.  his eyes don’t cloud, confused as he remembers what’s real and what’s not.  his shoulders don’t sag with the weight of memory and responsability.  instead he freezes and his face twists in a pain she wasn’t expecting.

“you’re pregnant,” he tells her.  “i can feel it.”

and rey can too.  a small bundle of growing life.  

he’s afraid.  afraid of it, afraid of her, afraid of himself.

and rey takes a deep breath and wills herself not to be afraid too.

* * *

he is frightened. 

she hasn’t felt this much fear in him ever.  kylo ren had never been one to show fear–anger before fear, wrath before terror.  ben though…

ben’s frightened of the life growing within her, frightened of  _the force_  growing within her.  “my mother says she felt darkness in me even before i was born,” he tells her one night.  

“i don’t feel darkness,” rey replies firmly–firm because she doesn’t.  the brightness of the force in their child is 

“i do,” he whispers back.  

she takes his hand and feels him pull her awareness of the force into his.  he has done this before, just as she has.  she showed him the light, he showed her the dark.  it was how they’d found one another in the end.  so she lets him show her the darkness he sees in their child.

it’s there.  she sees it now, and sees also why he’d see it before she would.  ben’s always seen darkness first.  it blinds him to the light sometimes, and the light is so bright that it casts a long, dark shadow that she hadn’t even noticed. she squeezes ben’s hand and he lets her take control and she shows him that brightness.  light and dark–both there together.   _balance,_ she remembers telling luke on that cliff.   _they said his grandfather brought balance to the force.  what does that even mean?  balance shifts…_

she feels ben’s lips against hers–a gentle kiss that she loses herself in for just a moment.  when she looks into his eyes again, the fear has receded to nervousness.  

nervousness is better.  nervousness she’s not afraid of.

* * *

“i thought she’d be bigger,” she hears ben whisper through her exhaustion and opens an eye blearily.

“she’ll grow,” leia tells her son.  “if she’s anything like you, she’ll grow a _lot._ ”  leia is not a tall woman, and her son towers over her.  in his hands, rey sees a bundle wrapped in silvery cloth. 

ben doesn’t look at his mother.  he doesn’t even look at rey, though he can probably tell she’s awake.  they’re aware of one another in ways that other people aren’t.  he stares down at his daughter, that little pink-cheeked thing that  had come squawling into the world only a few hours before.  

“did you decide on a name for her?” leia asks quietly.  she glances at rey and sees that she’s awake.  the smile in her eyes says more than words could manage.  she understands the exhaustion, the overstimulation, the way her heart and brain and lungs all seem to stop working the moment her eyes fall on that silver bundle in ben’s hands.  

his hands are so very big, and she is so very small.  ben brings her back across the room and sits down next to her, and rey reaches out to caress her daughter’s face.  her skin is so soft, and her face is so very peaceful, and when she glances up at ben, she sees her daughter in his eyes.

“hope,” rey says quietly, then clears her throat and says again, more loudly, “hope solo.”


	2. a dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-compliant

it is warm–dry.  

he remembers the rain on his glove.  she’s somewhere else now.  jakku again, maybe?  it would explain the heat.  but not the scent of burning fabric in his nose.

he can feel her hands.  she has strong hands.  that doesn’t surprise him.  a scavenger girl with a staff should have strong hands–calloused hands.   _even princesses should get their hands dirty,_ his mother had told him when he was a boy as she was helping chewie fix dad’s ship.  

dad always cared more for that ship than for him.

he doesn’t want to think about dad.

he doesn’t want to think about dad’s ship.

he wants to think about rey, and her hands, and how he can feel them on his face, in his hair.  he hurts–his head especially.  he must have hit it, somehow.  but the touch of her hands ease that a little bit.  

“you stayed,” he whispers to her.  his throat is dry.  it has to be jakku.  but if it’s jakku, why is he there?

she doesn’t say a word.  she just keeps touching his face, his hair.  

he should move.  he should sit up.  he should hold her.  she stayed for him after all.  he’d killed for her, after all.  that one good thing, that one confusing thing–blue in a field of red, blue like the blade of his first lightsaber.

she’d thrown it to him so easily.  he’d never fought beside anyone before–not like that.  not even luke’s other padawans had fought at his side when they’d trained.  he’d outstripped them all.  not rey though.  never rey.  she’d beaten him in the snow.  it wasn’t his weakness–no matter what snoke said.  it was her strength.  she was so strong.  

he tries to sit up but finds his ribs hurt.  there’d been an explosion.  they’d ripped the lightsaber apart, but something had exploded, and now she was here with him.  she’d taken him to safety, maybe?  but why?  they were safe.  he would keep her safe.  safe from snoke, safe from skywalker, safe from everyone.  

she was too trusting.  she needed to be kept safe.

“where are we?” he asks again.  he can’t hear his own rasping voice.  his throat is too dry.  her hands shift and he feels the pressure of them over his heart now, burning into him.  and he finds he doesn’t care whether she answers or not.  they can be on jakku for all he cares–the only thing that matters is her hand over his heart, that she understands, that she stayed with him, hadn’t abandoned him the way everyone else had.

he can feel her breath against his cheek.  he can smell it–salty, and sweet somehow together.  his father had once given him a sweet covered salt stick.  he’d been six.  it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.  

rey’s breath is better.

he wants to kiss her.  he’s never kissed anyone before, never wanted to.  but he wants to kiss her, to hold her, to rut with her like an animal until they were both gasping and clinging to one another because she felt it too, didn’t she?  she understood, didn’t she?  she got what it was to suddenly feel alive after so many years of loneliness, he had seen that much in her eyes.  and she knew that snoke had lied to both of them–that he’d never once lied to her.  kylo ren is many things and more, but he’s not a liar.

he inches his face towards hers.  he doesn’t know how to kiss but she’s a desert rat from jakku she probably hasn’t kissed anyone either, and this is how you do it, right?  you just…kiss her, right?  

he can taste her breath, but her lips aren’t there.

he opens his eyes but everything’s wrong. 

he can smell dried blood and singed fabric and there’s fire falling around him.  he reaches out but can’t feel her.  not her hands, not her breath, not the force of her–as powerful as the brightest stars.

when he looks up, he sees hux standing over him, eyes full of disdain.

and he understands.

a dream, then.  she hadn’t stayed after all.  she’d abandoned him, just like everyone else.

fleetingly, he wishes the eyes gazing coolly at him were rey’s, with every ounce of hate she could muster.

hate is better than disdain.


	3. Chapter 3

she’s like starlight, he thinks.  pinpricks of brightness in the vast empty blackness of space.

from far away, the light seems weak.  but getting close–too close–that means destruction.

he’s the monster.  but the sun burns hot enough to kill sometimes.


	4. in an elevator

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: e
> 
> tags: modern au, sexual content

every elevator has a stop button.  they’re there for mechanical repairs–to make sure that when you’re fixing something in the elevator, someone on the nineteenth floor doesn’t call it up to them and then everything goes to hell.

every elevator has a stop button, but they’re not supposed to be used for this.  

“ _ben_ ,” she hisses when pulls it out and the elevator jerks to a halt, but his lips are already on hers, kissing her so hard that her lungs stop working for just a moment.  “ben, we can’t do this here.”

“we really can,” he replies and his hands are on her hips, pulling himself closer to her.

“there’s a security camera,” she points out and he turns his head to glance at it over his shoulder.  a moment later there are crackling sparks and the thing is smoking.  “ _ben_.”

“i’ll fix it later,” he shrugs, and kisses her again.  

“you’re unbelievable,” she whispers into his lips, rolling her eyes, but unable to hide the grin that’s creeping across her face.  

something about ben wanting her, needing her always makes her feel so very warm.  

she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him and reaches up to run her hands through his hair.  he’d washed it that morning before they’d gone out and it’s so soft beneath her fingers.  her teeth worry at his lower lip and his hands drift from her ass to her shoulders and back.  she can feel him getting hard against her stomach and almost as soon as she feels it, his hands are under her rear to hoist her up higher so she grind against him better.

“hang on,” she whispers against his lips.

“rey,” he growls, but her hands are on her belt and she’s tugging it loose, then shimmying her jeans down her legs.  she toes her shoes off and kicks the pants the rest of the way up, then jumps up and wraps her legs around his hips–with just the scrap of her underwear between them.

“saves us some time,” she teases, and for good measure she rubs herself against his hard-on.  it feels so much better when she doesn’t have denim between on over the cotton of her underpants.  

ben’s hands grab her ass and he moves her up and down a few times, sending waves of warmth from her cunt through the rest of her body as she leans her head forward and sucks at his neck.  she loves the taste of his skin, the salty tang of his sweat and that other flavor she can’t describe in any other word than  _ben_.  it’s there in his skin, it’s there in his saliva on her tongue, it’s there in his cum when she’s blowing him–that taste that’s him and only him.  

she wraps an arm around his shoulder and grabs his ass with her other hand as she feels him fumbling with his own belt, his own jeans.  she likes the way his wrist feels between her and cants her hips to rub herself against it, smiling into his neck as she does.  

“and you didn’t want me to stop the elevator,” he teases, still fumbling.

“look once we commit to a plan, i’m game.  it’s not ever my problem that i think your decision making is sometimes a little misguided.”

“misguided?” he asks and he stops fumbling with his belt.  his wrist turns and she feels his fingers pushing aside the cotton of her underpants and probing at the hot, wet flesh beneath.  “misguided?”  he thumbs her clit, and slides two fingers into her and she gasps, and grinds her hips against his hand.  “is this misguided?”

“i mean,” she says as she pushes herself onto his hand so his fingers are as deep as they can get at this angle, stroking the inside of her, “i like your fingers and all, but i would say it’s misguided that i want them more than your dick right now.”

“you little–” he begins but she cuts him off with a kiss and grinds into his hand again, rocking hard and fast, letting herself relish the curls of pleasure that his fingers are pressing into her from within as she rubs her clit against his thumb.  

“ben,” she moans against his lips, her arm tightening around his shoulders.  she brings her other hand between them as well and picks up the work of fumbling with his belt, unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans, reaching down and pulling him loose, his skin hot and velvet-soft.  he pulls his fingers out of her and a moment later he’s sheathed inside her, and she’s glad she’s got the wall of the elevator against her back because it makes it easier to cling to him as he thrusts into her, again and again.

his lips find her neck, and she wouldn’t say that he kisses her so much as rests them there as he pants into her.  she runs her fingers through his hair again as the force with which he fucks her sends her sliding up and down the wall of the elevator and as his pants drop a little more with each thrust, she begins to hear the sound of his skin smacking against hers as he moves faster and faster and faster–wild for her in the way that only ben ever could be.

her head falls forward against his shoulder as she rides him, her cunt is sinfully slick as it takes him in, and every movement of him–his dick pushing in and pulling out, his chest heaving as he breathes hard against her, the vibrations of the incoherent noises he’s making–sends her head spinning towards a blank abyss where nothing exists but the two of them, hearts and bodies moving as one forever, and ever, and ever…

her orgasm rolls out of her like a sail unfurling and snapping in the wind–filling her body completely and carrying her faster and faster away from any sense of reality.  ben’s the wind, or maybe he’s the boat, or maybe he’s whoever’s at the tiller–it doesn’t really matter.  all that matters is that rey is flying, her eyes closed against the bland lighting of the elevator because if she opens her eyes and sees reality, the perfect way she feels right now will be crushed.

her cunt is twitching and tender, and she slows the movement of her hips and shifts between ben and the wall to change the angle so that when he thrusts into her she feels it less.  she kisses his neck, kisses his jaw, kisses along the scar she gave him, kisses his cheek, his nose, his lips–his lips longest of all.  his lips that taste like ben opening to a tongue that tastes like ben.  she rubs his tongue with hers and fists her fingers in his hair, pulling it slightly and he groans and his next thrust sends a second, sharper orgasm into her and she gasps into his mouth because she hadn’t been expecting this one.  her heart is beating an erratic tattoo against his chest and any hope she’d had of having a coherent thought is gone now because the only thing she can think of is just how thick he feels between her legs, and just how good it feels to have him to clench around, and how much she loves the taste of him on her tongue, the feeling of his heart against hers when he moans her name and shoots hot cum right up inside her.

he holds her there for a moment, then lifts an arm from her ass to rest against the wall and he leans against that, breathing hard.  he kisses her as he goes limp inside her with gentle lips.  he kisses her as he pulls out of her, and tugs his pants back up his legs and buttons them.  he kisses her as she leans against the wall, basking in the glow of it all, not quite ready to find her own pants.  he kisses her until she can think again.

“misguided?” he asks her again as she pulls her jeans up and he’s smirking a bit.

“shut up.”


	5. this darkness is the light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-compliant, songfic
> 
> for [@bloomsbury](http://bloomsbury.tumblr.com) who draws such lovely [art ](http://bloomsbury.tumblr.com/tagged/resim_mesim) and who did this to me with [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMq3lQFFHFw)

_each step i left behind / each road you know is mine / walking on a line ten stories high / say you’ll still be by my side_

she’s lighter than he ever was.  

she’s all boiling energy, and what darkness there is in her must be stoked.  she is all heart, all loving impulse, and when the rage is there, why, it is righteous rage, the sort of rage the  _light_  can stomach.

and therein lies the problem.  rage and light do not go hand in hand.  ben solo learned that young.  kylo ren lives it daily.  rage is easier than light.  rage makes it hurt less, and pain is weakness.  that’s something she may yet learn.  she is young.  there is still time to show her.  it will hurt less if she lets herself be  _angry_ , that loneliness, that fear of worthlessness…it will all go away if she lets herself sink into the dark.

he can show her that.  he can take her pain away.  

* * *

* * *

_if i could take your hand, oh / if you could understand / that i can barely breath the air is thin / i fear the fall and where we’ll land  
_

but oh, the pain of it all.

this is why he does not hope.  this–right here–the agony of watching her eyes as she looks at him, so trusting.  does she trust him?  can she trust him?  could she be the first to do so?  everyone–rightly–does not trust him, and she shouldn’t, he had never expected that she would after he murdered solo.  and yet…

he hadn’t realized how much he’d needed trust until he sees her, until she holds out her hand to him, until she arrives on the supramacy, coming for him–lovingly impulsive.  

everyone knows that vader struggled to breathe, that mustafar burned his lungs too much for them to function without machinery.  

he struggles to breathe when she calls him ben.

do his lungs still work?  he can feel his beating heart.  she trusts him.  and he knows her rage.  she’ll learn, she’ll let him teach her.

* * *

* * *

_each breath i left behind / each breath you take is mine / walking on a line ten stories high / fear a fall, you’re asking why_

he’s a failure of an apprentice.  skywalker, and now snoke.  

but he doesn’t care, because if those failures mean he doesn’t fail her, he’ll take it.  he can be greater than either of them, take what they taught him and make them his.

from skywalker, he learned control.   _“ben, you must_ control _your anger, or it will control you.”_   he’ll be the first to confess to the spiteful relish he feels whenever he lets the anger takes control, but now–oh now–he cannot let the anger rule him.  now, just now, he must be ben solo for one moment more.  she called him ben, calls him ben to snoke’s face.  he can be ben for a moment if it means that she lives and they triumph.

from snoke, he learned trickery.  he’s not good at it–no better than he is at skywalker’s control.  there’s too much of solo in him, and solo had never been good at duplicity.   _“had a slight weapons malfunction. but everything’s perfectly all right now. we’re fine. we’re all fine here, now, thank you. how are you?”_  and then blasting the comm, as solo had used to drunkenly tell.  

but the only person who’s ever trusted him is looking at him in fear, in horror.  

she is not the enemy.  she never could be the enemy.  she’s the only ally he’s ever had–she understands him, sees  _him_ …

* * *

* * *

_ leaving the things we lost, oh / leaving the ones we’ve crossed / i have to make an end so we begin / to save my soul at any cost  
_

but he’s wrong.  

he turned on snoke–what she must have seen–but she does not take his hand, does not step into his arms, into the galaxies they will build together.  

she clings to it–the things that hurt her.  that’s human, but it’s beneath her.  she clings to her scum parents, clings to a failure of a dream that his mother had orchestrated, but she won’t cling to him.  he knows her pain, he’s lived it.  he knows her power, he’s weilded it.  he’s known her trust–he’s trusted her too.

but she tries to take the saber.  she struggles against him, pulls away from him, and he feels his own fury boil within him because she is better than this–she is more than this, can be so much more.

* * *

* * *

_ we fight every night for something / when the sun sets we’re both the same / half in the shadows / half burned in flames / we can’t look back for nothing / take what you need, say your goodbyes / i gave you everything / and it’s a beautiful crime _

much later, when he has lost, when he is on his knees, when he sees that righteous anger in her eyes, the rage goes out of him for just a moment.

for just a moment, she is the angry one and he’s the one pleading for her to stop being this.  

she trusted him.  but in the end, she was like all the others.  she saw in him what she wished to see.

and can he blame her?  he did the same.


	6. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-compliant

Rey comes to before he does.  She pulls herself back together before he does.  She holds her aching heart in her hand before he does.  

_It wasn’t supposed to go like this_ , she thinks, staring at him.   _You were supposed to turn, to remember who you are…  Not let the past die.  You were supposed to be Ben again._

She can’t see his face, the way he’s lying.  It’s better that way, she thinks.  He’d told her she wasn’t alone, but here at the end of all this she is.  She doesn’t want to see his eyes, big and brown and pleading.  She doesn’t want to feel hope in her breast blooming when she hears the lightsaber igniting behind her and Snoke’s surprise.

The saber is broken in half.  She sees it on the floor and bends to take up both pieces.  She can see the blue crystals inside and tucks them carefully into her belt.  

She looks at him one last time.   _I should put him down like a rabid dog,_  she thinks.   _He’d sooner burn the galaxy than save it._

But she can’t quite do it.  She remembers the feel of his hand on hers, the brightness of his eyes, the way he’d sounded close to tears when he’d said,  _“Please.”_

She needs to get off this ship, needs to get away from him, needs to find Finn, and be everything that she wants to be–that  _she_  wants to be, not Luke, not Ben, not anyone but her.


	7. “You’re the best part of me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon compliant, me on my weird artsy bullshit
> 
> prompted by [@politicalmamaduck](http://politicalmamaduck.tumblr.com)

there is hate in her eyes.

that is good.

the best part of him hates himself too.

* * *

he’d had nightmares ever since he was a child. people talk of dreams. “you have to follow your dreams, kid,” his father had told him, rubbing his hair as he ate his breakfast. “or else you become nothing.” from the sounds of it, dreams are supposed to be sweet places. the reality he has known has been different.

* * *

what do you forge yourself with, when hope is an illusion and dreams are dark? he is steel, and blood, and pride because he doesn’t have anything else.

steel, and blood, and pride, and hate.

* * *

there has always been hate in her heart.

he would be narcissistic to think that he is the only person she hates, the only monster that plagues her. she has hated long before him, and will hate long after she has reduced him to dust. hate is natural in a creature like her. hate is a child of loneliness and she is a child of abandonment.

it is a fine hate, a controlled one. she doesn’t let herself feel it, would pin hope on hate like a helmet and let her think that something else lies beneath the mask. 

 this he sees clearly. 

 this he knows all too well.

* * *

how odd to see hope in her hate.

_aha, i know you._

_aha, we are the same._

it is intoxicating.  it is maddening.  it is damning.

* * *

he tells himself her hate won’t hurt him.

who wouldn’t hate a beast?

(who could ever love a beast?)


	8. “I’m not jealous.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence, angst
> 
> prompted by [@lordsnow](http://lordsnow.tumblr.com)

he sees her dancing in silver, her arms wrapped around rose, swaying to the beat of the music.  she should always wear silver.  it is a good color on her–dark and light, but more light than dark.  she shines like a star as she dances.  the only star he’s ever really thought was beautiful.

she looks over at him, and he sees the easy smile slip into something deeper when their eyes lock.  he is sitting, and she is dancing.  she is celebrating, and he is awaiting judgement in a cold, dark cell.  she is the only one who sees him.  he is the only one who understands her.

she falters as rose keeps swaying, and swallows, and won’t look away.  then she lets go of rose and crosses from the dance floor.  she holds out a hand and he takes it, letting her pull him to his feet.  

“you’ll look like your dancing with thin air,” he whispers to her.

she turns her back to him and leans against his chest, letting him wrap his arms around her.   “then let me dance with thin air.”

he is not jealous of her freedom, not jealous that he may well die before the week is out, executed for his crimes.  he is not jealous of her victory, nor of her friendships.  he is jealous of no one and everyone, because he will never, truly, be able to dance with her.


	9. “I shouldn't be in love with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> anonymous prompt

her hands are shaking as the plank lifts and it hides his face from her.

there is tinny adrenaline in her mouth, fight or flight.  she’s flying.  but one day, she will fight him.  she knows that.  he cannot live, cannot continue.

 _there were tears in his eyes_ , a voice in the back of her mind says, the same voice that had screamed at luke in a storm.

 _there weren’t,_  she tells the voice.  

she is tired of seeing what she wishes to see in kylo ren.  he has made his choices, and she has made hers.  it is not her responsibility to save his soul.  he doesn’t want it.

 _he’s the best hope you have,_  that stubborn voice tells her.   _you knew that, once._

 _before i knew how lost he was!_ she screams at it.   _before he wanted to destroy it all!_

_but his lip trembled.  he was kneeling before you._

rey hates her heart in that moment.  she hates the hope she bore for years that her parents truly cared for her, hates that even moments after being reunited with finn–that finn is alive! that he is well!–her mind is back on kylo ren.  she hates that her heart is still clinging on (“you’re still holding on.  let go!” he had shouted at her.  how had he known?) to that vision she had had when they touched hands.

he was smiling at her there, and how beautiful was his face when he smiled.  he was sitting in pale jedi robes, and around him was an aura so bright that she didn’t understand how anyone who had once been a sith could create that. “ _you and me, versus the universe,”_ he had whispered to her.  

“ _you and me, defending the universe,”_ she had corrected gently.

“ _same difference_.”

she hates her heart for clinging onto him, for seeing how he swallowed when he noticed her.  she hates that in her heart, she thinks she loves him.  (she hates that in her heart, she wonders if she always has.)


	10. “Look at me—just breathe, okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> genre: canon-divergence
> 
> prompted by [@smol-reylo](http://smol-reylo.tumblr.com)

“breathe.  breathe for me.  just breathe.”

he’s wheezing and when rey squeezes his hand, sinks into his consciousness she can feel the heat in his lungs.  he’s panicking, hyperventilating, which only makes the breathing hurt more.  his lungs are burned–burning still.

“in and out, ben–slowly.”

 _it hurts,_ he pulses at her.   _it hurts more than anything._ his whole body is dying from the lack of oxygen and she can feel it.  

“i know.  but you promised.  you promised if i made it, you’d live.”

_i don’t know if i–_

“you’re not a liar, ben.  you told me that.”  he had no subtle bones in his body, and how she hated his truths but they were truths.  “you spent years wanting to be the next vader.  he survived on mustafar.  so can you.”

she sinks into the force.  she doesn’t know healing, and besides–ben would probably need to heal himself.  she takes his hand and wills the oxygen in her lungs to spread through the force to him.  it doesn’t.  because that’s not how the force works.

but she does feel his fingers start to twitch.  she does feel his hand tightening in hers, as if drawing strength from her arm.  she sees him close his eyes–not in pain, but in something else.  she feels heat, not from the volcanic planet around her, but from the force around ben as he lies there, breathing slowly. when he opens his eyes, they lock onto hers.

 _don’t look away_ , he begs her.   _don’t let me die on my own._

“you’re not going to die,” she tells him fiercely.  

_maybe.  i’ll try not to._

_i’m not a liar._

his face is wracked in pain, and his grip on her hand is unbearably hard.  he is wheezing still, and there are flecks of spittle at the corner of his mouth, and rey reaches a hand up and brushes sweaty dark hair from his forehead.  

in her mind, she sees the seas of ahch-to, feels the rain that fell from the heavens that fell on her face, and fell on his.  she wills the sea breeze to cool him as his ragged breathing clears and his hand goes lax in hers.


	11. “I’m not going to apologize for this. Not anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> anonymous prompt

rey sits there, watching him, her arms folded over her chest and kylo ren gets to his feet turning his back on the table.   

“everyone out,” he barks, and he hears hux clear his throat.

“supreme leader–”

“ _out_ ,” and they get to their feet and shuffle out of the room.  only when he hears the door shut does he whirl around to face her.

“you left  _me,_  remember.”

“not how i remember it,” rey says firmly.  “i seem to recall it being you refusing to come with me.  and now look what it’s got you.”

he picks up a glass and hurls it past her head–not at her, directly.  he knows it wouldn’t hurt her–she’d tried shooting him and it hadn’t worked.  but he still can’t bring himself to hurl it at her face.  it shatters on the ground behind her.

“so you think you can still get me, is that it?” he demands.  “save my soul?  is that why you didn’t kill me on the supremacy?  it was just the first bout of many?  yes.  yes, that’s it isn’t it?”  his lips pull back in a snarl.  

“so i suppose you could say i didn’t leave you,” she says at last.  “which means you’ll find i won’t be apologizing for doing it.  and–when hux sticks a knife in your back–as i’m sure you know he’s planning to–remember that i will bring you to safety.”

“by closing the door of the falcon in my face.”

she raises her eyebrows at him and there’s something too knowing in that look.   _you weren’t ready then, and you aren’t ready now,_ the look seems to say,  _but you will be.  i know you will be._ “i’ll bring you home, ben.”

and she’s gone.

and ben grabs another glass and throws it at the chair she’d just vanished from.

the glass does not break.  it stands perfectly and infuriatingly upright on the chair.  ben flexes his fingers and the thing shatters, but it’s somehow less satisfying when he does it this way.


	12. Wanwierd (an unhappy fate)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence, major character death
> 
> prompted by [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)

_Neither are you,_ she had told him, a blanket around her to keep her warm after the cold of the cave.  She remembers reaching for his hand, remembers him reaching for hers, remembers that indescribable thrum of the Force in her heart, in her lungs, dark and light balancing itself within her.

The room is bright, the light from the lamp oddly silvery.  He is not bound to the chair that they’ll execute him in.  He is free to move around the room, an odd charity for one whom they know to be so powerful.   _The cuffs won’t keep me,_ he had told his mother when he’d descended from the Falcon and she’d extended them towards him.   _No, but they make people feel better,_ Leia had replied firmly.  

Leia is not there.  She will not watch her son die.  She has lost her brother, and her former husband–and how she had tried desperately to commute his sentence to banishment of some sort, exile.  But he is too strong, and thus too dangerous.  Rey can feel Leia’s heartbreak; she knows Ben can too.

She sits there watching him.  The time has passed for holding him, for kissing him, for feeling the Force balance their two souls in a dance she can only begin to understand.  The time is gone for her to learn from him what knowledge he’d gleaned in his time with Luke.  The only thing that remains is the two of them, quietly waiting for his death.

She remembers how he’d killed Snoke when he’d commanded her death, how they’d fought side by side against the guards in that horrible red room.   _Let the past die.  Kill it, if you have to._ The past is killing him, and she doesn’t know what to do to prevent it.

“You’re not alone,” she whispers to him and his eyes flick to hers.  “I’ll be here.  I’ll be with you, until the very end.”

His lip quivers.

“And I’ll be with you.  There is no death, there is the Force.”

He’d told her,  _You’re not alone._

And she wants to have faith that that will be true.  She clung to hopes of her parents returning for her for how many years–surely she can cling to this too.


	13. Baisemain (A kiss on the hand.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> prompted by [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)

“I suppose that men in my family do have a tendency to lose hands in battle.  I should be relieved,” Leia grouses as the medic unwraps the bandage from Ben’s hand.  Annoyance flashes in Ben’s eyes as he looks at his mother.  He doesn’t like being compared to Luke–even when the comparison is fair.  Rey, seated on the other side of the bed, squeezes his good hand and she feels the anger that had been flaring in him wash away at her touch.  

“Oh, not just Luke,” Leia says, rolling her eyes and shaking her head slightly.  “You can be as touchy as Han sometimes–” His hand tightens in Rey’s this time.  “I was referring to my father.  He didn’t have either of his arms by the end of his life.”

Ben looks at his mother for a moment, then says slowly, “One more way in which I fail to be Darth Vader, I guess.”

“Are you joking about this?”

His lips twitch and Leia reaches out and slaps his shoulder.  

“How come you’re allowed to joke about my dismemberment but I’m not?” Ben yelps.

“Because I bore you,” she replies.  “And because you’ve caused more than enough trouble.”  But she runs her hand through his hair gently to take the sting from her words, and Rey feels an odd twinge of shame mixed with relief in Ben.   _He is used to being berated for his transgressions,_ Rey thinks.  But the memory she’d felt in him of Snoke’s lighting is so different from his mother’s touch.  He closes his eyes for a moment, and Rey watches him closely.

Leia turns back to the medic.  “Is he going to regain full functionality?”

“I would suspect so,” the medic says, and she eyes ben nervously.  

“If you stop mocking me for getting myself wounded, mother, I may even be able to accelerate the healing,” Ben says.

“The Force can heal?” Rey asks quietly, and Ben glances at her.   _I forget how little you’ve been taught,_ his eyes tell her.  

“Yes,” Ben says.  “So long as the limb’s still attached, and if I can concentrate enough, I may be able to do something about it.  With focus…and control…”

“Could I heal you?” she asks him.  She has much better control than Ben does, even in moments when she doesn’t feel like she has any control at all.

The medic looks between the two of them, then at Leia.  

“You can try,” he says.  “It’s something you should learn at some point.”

So Rey rounds the bed and takes Ben’s hand gently between her fingers.  His bones are broken, and the cut there runs deep and he winces when she takes it in hers.  “Sorry,” she mumbles, but there’s such trust in his eyes, even if he doesn’t respond.

She bends her head over his hand to kiss it, then closes her eyes, and reaches out into the balance.


	14. Strikhedonia (The pleasure of being able to say “to hell with it.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> prompted by [@lordsnow](http://lordsnow.tumblr.com)

Perhaps the most terrifying part of it is how easy it is to just…do it.  To hold every bit of power in your life in your own hands and just…go.  No Uncle Luke telling him that he needs to control himself, no Father telling him to just stop using the Force for one minute, no Snoke telling him that he can always be more.  

He watches as Asrel Ren raises his blade and his hand moves of its own accord, igniting his own and stabbing it through Asrel’s chest.  He swirls the blade around lazily.  He killed six padawan learners once, children only just his age or younger–they were harder to kill than the stunned knights of Ren, unsure why it was that the great Jedi Killer was now turning on them.

They will die curious, confused.  They will die before they touch her.

He stands among their corpses and Rey stares at him.  It is raining.   _You’re a monster.  Yes I am._ Her clothing clings to her, and there is mud on her face, confusion in her eyes, and a red glow across her face from his lightsaber.  

“Why?” she asks him at last.   _Why did you kill him?_ There are no swallowed tears in her voice this time.

“Why do you think?” he asks.   _Because I_ can _,_ he wants to tell her.   _Because they do not command me–I command myself, and they would have you dead._

_And I would have you live._

The red glow on her face disappears and he falls to his knees before her, his eyes never leaving hers.  He reaches out a hand for her, and her eyes drop to it.  _Please_ , he thinks, on his knees in the mud and rain.  

She looks back at his face, her neck stiff, her eyes unreadable.  Then she stands and he feels the world ending again–because of course it is.  She destroyed his world in fire, why not also in water.

Her hand is in his and she’s pulling him to his feet before he understands what’s happening.  She’s standing so close to him that he can see the way the wet is holding her eyelashes together.  

“This doesn’t change anything,” she says at last.  “You have to care about  _them_ , Ben.  Not just me.”

Ben only smiles.  She doesn’t know yet–but she’ll see.  He’s said to hell with it all, and it changes everything.


	15. Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: e
> 
> tags: canon-divergence, sexual content
> 
> for [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com), whose reaction to what might happen after Rey's Force Vision where Kylo kills the knight of Ren who's about to attack her was "They gonna bang. He gonna kill the knights of Ren and then they gonna bang."

It feels decadent–all this water.  All this water and Ben, bearing down on her, his lips at her throat.  

How dry had her skin been on Jakku.  How transient the sand as the wind blew it across the surface of the planet.

The mud holds her form underneath her, and it squelches beneath her as she runs her hands along his back.  She’s not sure what to do with them, but this feels right, holding him feels right, the weight of him pushing her into the earth feels right.  Everything smells stronger in the rain, the mineral scent of the mud, his sweat, the scorched blood of the Ren he’d just killed.   _Killed for me,_ she thinks.  

He is a monster, but he is her monster, and she realizes that she doesn’t care how monstrous he is if he is hers.  Perhaps that is the dark that Luke had feared in her.  But she cares even less about that–she can’t care when his lips are moving from her neck to her jaw, across her cheek to her own lips and his lips were made to be kissed, so big, so soft, so sweet.  There is nothing in the universe except his lips, nothing exists beyond the rain and the two of them–not space, not time.

Her veins are on fire and can the Force make her feel his heart twice, beating against her chest and beating in her chest, twin to her own?  Can she feel her own heart twice, in the home it’s always had and somehow, inexplicably, pounding alongside his?  She feels his hands on her face, feels her hands on his back, feels her blood, and his, and the rain…

She pushes herself against his chest, rolls him over so that he’s the one in the mud now.  She straddles him and sits up as lightning crackles across the sky behind her.  He sits up beneath her, lips at her neck again, hands fumbling at her wrappings and she runs her hands through his now-muddy hair.  The water will wash it clean, as it washes the mud down her back.  The water will make it all go away. 

His lips are on her breast the moment that it springs loose, and she arches her back, pressing her skin into his tongue.  He nips at it, and nibbles, his teeth just gentle enough not to hurt her, just rough enough to send heat through her.  She is wet, outside and within, and the rain only comes down harder.

Her skin relishes in it all, in the moisture, in the warmth of his mouth, the warmth of his hands.  She grinds herself against him because it seems the thing to do.  There is water everywhere–so much water the earth rejects it and turns muddy–what else is she supposed to do except this?  Her hands scrabble to find the fastenings of his vest and she undoes them, and he pulls it from his shoulder.  His shirt follows, and then his hands fumble with the tops of her own trousers while she undoes the front of his. 

He is laughing breathlessly.  She has never heard him laugh.  The rain makes him playful, she thinks.  His soul has been parched too.

Off with her trousers, and though the wind is high, she is not cold when he guides her onto him.  How full of him she feels–his soul flying across the stars to hers, his heart thudding in her own chest, and now this.  She drops her lips to his and her hands find his.  She wants to hold his hand.  There is something pure in that when the rest feels like more than she deserves.  The mud squelches underneath him, and her bare skin slaps against his own as she rides him but with his hand in hers the sounds seem less base.  His eyes are bright and wet with rainwater and he looks at her like she’s the moon, like she’s lightning, like she’s the only thing living in the dead universe.

 _He wants me,_  she thinks.  _He will never abandon me._

His hips rise to meet hers, his lips press against hers, his hands hold hers, his heart beats in time with hers and Rey drowns herself in him.


	16. if i just lay here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: m
> 
> tags: canon-compliant/canon-divergence, sexual content

i.

she will never know the way she buries his face into his chest when she sleeps.  she curls up tightly most nights, not wanting to take up space, wanting to keep what little heat her body produces safe from the desolate jakku night when the temperature drops to below freezing.  she tucks her knees up to her chest and her head burrows into a chest that is not there with her and inhales the smell of a man a galaxy away.  

he will never know the way his arm drapes lazily over her hip, the way his lips rest in her hair as he curls his head down.  he sleeps on his side tonight as he does most nights, facing the door as he has done ever since skywalker lit his lightsaber to ben solo’s turned back.  he does not usually sleep easily.  he will never know why he does on some nights.

ii.

she will never know the way that a fantom face nuzzles into her breasts when she lies on her back. she will never know the way her dreaming hand comes down to lace fingers through soft dark hair, will never know the way their breath moves as one.  she will never know what the weight of his head and shoulder hovering over her heart means for her dreams, blissfully blank because he is there with her and so cannot haunt that dreamscape that can be bliss or agony, depending.  

he will never know how her warmth engulfs him, how soft the feel of her breasts are, and how soothing, and how safe.  he will never know how if it’s strange for him to lie on his stomach tonight, it’s stranger still for her to lie on her back, open to the cold of space, open to the cold of a desert she has left so long ago, open to him, though she does not know it either.  

iii.

she will never know the way her leg has hitched up around his hip, will never know the way his arm seems to hold her there, flush against him yet absent completely.  she will never know that the reason she feels so warm tonight is the feel of his heartbeat against her breast, her groin to his, and the way she rocks her hips against him because even in sleep the body will move if it feels nice.  she will never know how she pants into his neck, how when she’s done she will fall away from him slightly but her leg will remain on his hip and pull him slightly so that he’s lying half-on half-off her now.  

he will never know the little moans she made as she rubbed against him, or the choked out gasps he made as he rubbed right back.  he will never know the way her lips smiled once she was done, will never know how she could be done but he would never be done with that feeling  of her heart against his, even if the feeling against his groin was too different for him to finish now.  he will never know how his body rolled against her because the absence of her even in sleep was more than he could bear, and he would forgo anything in order to stay close to her when the rest of the galaxy did not lie between them.

iv.

she will never know how safe she feels with him curled around her back, one arm resting on her hip, the other under her neck, his knees tucked up underneath her tucked up knees, and his lips pressing into the top of her head.  she will never know the feeling of his heart in parallel with hers this time, how his chest rises and falls in time with hers, how every now and then, he rubs his nose into her hair and sighs because the scent of her fills him with a peace he doesn’t understand when he wakes up alone.

and he–he will never understand why he feels so bereft when he wakes from a dreamless sleep when dreamless sleep has always been his most peaceful, will never understand why he feels like had something he could hold on to, something that filled his soul with warmth, something that would shield him from the way his own mind is fragmenting inside him, something simple, and and good, and his.  he will never understand why he feels like he made a mistake when he like he let go.  


	17. pretending to hate each other au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-compliant
> 
> prompted by [@lariren-shadow](http://lariren-shadow.tumblr.com)

It would be easier if he were better at pretend.  Duplicity has never been his strength.  He is rage and muscle, a brute, a monster.  His are not words that ring of falsehood.  Perhaps he speaks too soon, perhaps he speaks before his mind catches up to his lips.  _I’ll destroy her.  And you.  And all of it._ It was how he had beaten Snoke–that he had felt each arduous thought of what it would be like to murder her as he’d turned his grandfather’s lightsaber onto his master.  He couldn’t _lie_ , he’d had to live it, the thought of a gasp as life left her, of her hand reaching out to touch the scar on his face, exactly where Solo had cupped his cheek before he’d fallen.

It would be easier if he could throw some falsehood into his eyes, some sneer of fury at having been defeated.

But defeat has left him empty.  And if he cannot pretend when he’s too full of everything, what can he manufacture to allow him to pretend.  There are tears on his face–he cannot hide those.  His father’s dice are gone from his hand and she’s staring at him with cold, hard, fury in his eyes and he can’t pretend to be anything other than what he is, to have done anything other than what he’s done. 

He’s lost.  

_I’ve lost her.  And you.  And all of it._

* * *

_He felt peace, and purpose,_ she’d told Leia.  He’d gone into the Force, had faded into little more than light and sea breeze and Rey could imagine the sun on his face as it had happened.  _You think what?  I’m gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?_

Without spilling a drop of blood.

 _He hasn’t lost faith in Ben._ What a strange realization–Luke hadn’t told her so much, but Leia had whispered to her his last words.  _No one is ever truly gone._

_But he hasn’t seen what I’ve seen.  He doesn’t know what I know._

But he had been the one to create Kylo Ren, as much as Snoke.  And now he had faith where she didn’t.  He had had hope in his dying breath that she finds she does not have.  She moves through the halls of the Falcon, helping get everyone settled, get prepared, her mind reeling.  _Will defeat have changed him?  Luke having defeated him, and all of us having escaped his grasp._

_Let the past die.  Kill it, if you have to._

She knows he’s there because she hears nothing at all, though the ship in preparation for takeoff is hardly a silent thing.  She looks and sees him, kneeling on the ground, his gloved hand tightening over nothing.  She steels herself, preparing herself to be hard in the face of a snarl of rage and fury, her enemy for true now–an enemy she must lock out of her head and heart forever.

But his eyes are so sad when he sees her and he looks almost afraid of her.  _Do I look so hard?  I must seem to truly hate him._

She will not break now.  She will not let him see weakness in her.  If he is to break, he must break.  It is only once he’s broken himself of this that she would dare give him hope.


	18. two miserable people meeting at a wedding au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> prompted by an anon & [@harrumphandhuzzah](http://harrumphandhuzzah.tumblr.com/)

She can tell he doesn’t want to be there.  It’s clear from taking one look at him.  He’s not even bothering pretending to be happy.

Leia is ignoring him.  Her eyes are full of her new wife as they dance at the center of the throng of people, the two of them leaning sweetly against each other–Amilyn tall and thin, her hair a lovely violet bob, and Leia, older, shorter, resting her head on her shoulder as they sway in the crowd.

“You don’t like your mother’s new wife,” Rey asks and…Leia had mentioned that he had legally changed his name to Kylo recently looks around.

“I don’t care,” he says.  “Whatever makes her happy.”

“You wish she were still with your dad?” Rey guesses.  Han is there, drinking with Chewie somewhere over by the bar.  He had seemed amicable enough at his wife’s remarriage, and had even given a sweet toast dedicated to them that had been full of an oddly heartfelt snark.  

“No,” Kylo replies.  “They fought all the time and always threw me in the middle of it.  Them breaking up was a good thing.”

“Then why do you look like you’re at a funeral?” Rey demands.  “It’s your mother’s wedding.  Look happy, damn it.  _Be_ happy for her.”

He doesn’t say anything and she rolls her eyes and gets to her feet, deciding it’s a hopeless case and at least she _tried_ , and she should go find Finn and Poe because they were going shot for shot last she checked and she hopes she won’t be too far behind by the time she catches up when,

“You’re the only person who’s talked to me tonight, you know,” he says.

She turns slowly.  

He looks a little less angry, a little more bewildered, and Rey guesses that’s an improvement.

“Maybe if you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner, people would talk to you.  No one wants to spend time with the only visibly gloomy person at a wedding.”

“You are,” he points out, but there’s something bewildered in his voice.

Yes, she is.  She inhales.  His eyes are very odd now that the rage has seemed to drain out of them.  She doesn’t know what to make of them at all.  She knows even less what to make of them when he stands abruptly and asks, “Do you want to dance?”


	19. accidental pregnancy au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au, reylo baby (obviously)
> 
> prompted by an anonymous, and then addition prompted by others. if this au expands more, i will edit this chapter, rather than adding new chapters to this collection.

she wasn’t actually expecting to see him again.  it’s not like she had his number, or that they’d made any indication that they’d do this again sometime.  it had been one good fuck–one _good_  fuck–and then she’d watched languidly as he’d tugged his shirt back over his head and pulled his trousers back up and he’d been gone.  she remembers him more for the shape of his lips and the color of his eyes than anything substantial about his personality. 

so she’s surprised to say the least when she runs into him in the grocery store as she’s getting eggs because she’s run out, and her stomach is obviously swollen enough because it’s been six months since she’d seen him and at six months things are uncomfortable.

his eyes–those big brown eyes she remembers them–bug out of his head when he sees her and she knows he’s doing math very very quickly.

“yes,” she tells him, more because he’s in her way than anything else.  “yes, she’s yours.”

she watches him closely, watches as about sixteen emotions cross his face–shock, horror, anger, fear, and something else she can’t quite pinpoint.  his lips twitch for a moment and she sighs and walks past him.  “look, i’m tired, and i really need to sit down so if you’re going to have a freak out, please by all means don’t let me stop you.  but if you end up wanting to–”

he grabs her arm and she raises her eyebrows at him.  “i can take that,” he says at last, pointing to her basket.  “least i can do.”  she’s trying to think of what she can tell him to do with his several months too late with his fake chivalry and faulty condom, but he says, quietly, intensely, “please.”

she sighs and hands the basket over to him, glad not to have to be holding it anymore.  “i meant it when i said i am too tired to handle your freak out right now,” she tells him.

“i’m not freaking out,” he tells her.

“really?  you’re not?”

he doesn’t reply immediately and she snorts.  he’s definitely freaking out.

“no, i’m oddly calm,” he tells her and his voice is, indeed, oddly steady.  “i don’t know what you expect of me–probably not much given that you’re…what, six months in?  but you don’t have to go through this alone.  i don’t want to be a deadbeat.”

he sounds oddly fierce and it catches her off guard.  there’s something behind his words that she doesn’t know, can’t know, because she doesn’t know him too well.  but even as she looks into those burning brown eyes, she feels something down inside her go calm too.  _he doesn’t want to abandon her,_ she thinks, and unbidden comes the memory of running after her parents’ car, screaming and crying. 

she swallows.

“well, let’s talk then,” she says at last.  “and remind me of your name?”

“kylo,” he replies.  “kylo ren.”

“i’m rey,” she tells him.

“i know.  i remember.”

* * *

he carries the grocery bag home for her and doesn’t say a word the entire time that they’re walking the five blocks to her apartment.  she kicks off her shoes when she gets through the door and he follows suit since there’s salt from the no longer snowy sidewalks caking his boots.  rey takes the grocery bag away from him and brings the eggs and fruit that she’d gotten into the kitchen and puts them in the fridge.  then she shrugs out of her coat and goes and sits down in the living room, sighing with relief because she’s been on her feet for far too long.  

rey’s always been someone with stamina.  she’s always been fit, always been strong.  she hates admitting how exhausted pregnancy has made her, how her feet hurt, how her back hurts, how she can’t sit properly anymore because there’s just this _thing_  growing out of the front of her.

“i’d offer you tea or coffee, but you’ll have to make it yourself,” she says to him grumpily when she sees him standing there.  “i can’t have caffeine and don’t want to move.”

he sits, and he is staring at her and she stares back at him.  she can tell he’s processing, can tell he’s wrapping his head around the fact that he’s just learned he’s going to be a father in three or so months.

“not to be an asshole, but you’re sure it’s mine?” he asks her at last.

“you didn’t ask that in the store,” rey snorts.  

“i believe you, but i’d also be remiss not checking,” he says.  

“the timing or gender doesn’t work out for any of the other people i’d been with,” she shrugs.  “so yeah, as far as i’ve been thinking for the past few months, it’s only ever been possible that it’s you.”

he gets to his feet suddenly and goes into the kitchen.  she hears him rummage in her cabinet, then run the faucet.  a moment later he comes out with two glasses of water, handing one to her.  she blinks at it, then takes it.  he sits back down and takes a long drink from the water.

“what have you been telling people?” he asks.

“the truth.  that i got knocked up from a one night stand.  that i didn’t have his number.  that i don’t know him.  that i’m doing it on my own unless…unless he magically appears in my life for some reason.”

“and your parents are ok with that?” he sounds disbelieving.

rey takes a deep breath.  “if my parents, magically, walked into my life and started caring, then maybe their opinion would matter.  but they made their perspective on my life pretty clear a long time ago when they left me in a parking lot.”  she juts her jaw out, ready for him to rush to comfort her for something that’s more scar tissue than anything else at this point.  he’s trying to do this whole chivalrous thing, isn’t he?  make amends for knocking her up?

instead he laughs, and her eyes widen in shock.

“sounds like your parents are bigger assholes than mine,” he says through his amusement.  “i’m sorry for that.  so you’re really doing this on your own?”

“i have friends,” rey says, “but yes.  i am.”

“you don’t have to be alone,” he says quietly and the laughter is gone from his eyes.  they’re such a warm brown, his eyes.  “i mean it.  i don’t want to be a deadbeat.  i’m a selfish dick most of the time, but i mean it when i say that you’re not alone, if you don’t want it.”

yes–yes she’s tired of being alone.  years and years and years of just pushing on through, of continuing, of fighting to survive because she doesn’t have parents to protect her so goddamn if she’s not going to protect herself, and goddamn if she’s not going to protect the little girl growing inside her.  and she doesn’t know kylo ren at all, but there’s such a weird sincerity for a guy she’d run into at the grocery store only an hour before.   _i’m a selfish dick most of the time._ she doesn’t know what that means and she’s nervous about it.  but he looks like he means every ounce of sincerity in his eyes, and rey’s _not_  a naive child she knows how to suss out a liar when she meets one.  she wouldn’t have made it this far in life if that weren’t the case.

“i don’t know you,” rey says at last.  “i don’t know you at all.”

“no,” he agrees.  “and i don’t know you.  but we’ve got some time to work on that, i guess.”

“yeah, i guess.”  something in her chest expands.  

* * *

“what do your parents think?” she asks him the following weekend and he stiffens.  she’s sitting at her kitchen table, and he’s cooking for her.  she’d expected them to order food of some sort, but he’d said cooking calms him down and who is she to refuse someone making her food in her own kitchen.  

“i haven’t told them,” he says quietly and he flips the chicken breast he’s frying and she hears fresh sizzle as the uncooked meat meets the bottom of the pan.  “we’re not close.”

“are they the kind of people you’d want to keep away from her?”

she watches as kylo pokes the chicken for a moment before he glances over his shoulder at her.  “no,” he says at last.  “no, they’ll be thrilled about having a grandkid i imagine.”  his voice is bitter.

“they’ll hold it against you?”

“look, i’m the family fuck up, ok?  it’s why we’re not close.  i’ve managed to not just not meet every expectation they’ve ever had of me, but i’ve failed catestrophically at being what they want me to be.  what they want is for me to find a girl, fall in love, get married, plan a kid, have a kid.  not stumble into a pregnant by-blow at the grocery store six months later, ok?  they’ll be understanding, they’ll be so supportive, but they’ll be unbearably disappointed.  again.”

rey watches as he continues to check on the chicken.  “ordinarily, i’d say we’d give it time.  but time is not exactly something i have right now.”

“yeah,” he agrees.  “i’ll give them a call and see if we can…i don’t know.  get dinner or something.”

this is how rey ends up at a restaurant she’d never be able to afford the following saturday night, so anxious that she’s fifteen minutes early to the reservation.  she sits alone at her table, looking around at the nice art on the wall, listening to the quiet hum of conversations from the booth she’s been seated in.  

everything feels too fancy for her.  it helps nothing that she’s also dressed in frumpy pregnancy clothes she’d found at thrift.   _you’d better be worth it,_ she had thought as she’d used what little extra money in her budget she had for the clothes she’d only wear for a few months.  then she’d stopped.   _no.  you are.  even if you’re an accident, you’re worth it._ her eyes had filled with tears.  suddenly, rey feels less self-conscious about her frumpy clothes.  she runs her hand over her stomach.   _it’ll be hard but you’ll be worth it i know it._

and she’s not alone.  kylo seems determined about that. 

she tries to put away finn’s warnings–that he could be a crazy person, that he seemed to have enough money and education to get a lawyer that would fuck shit up if she tried to keep him away from his kid and that that was dangerous.   _i can take care of myself._ and there’s something about kylo that feels raw.  like he’s being nothing but honest with her.  rey can work with that.

“rey?” she looks up and sees to people easing into their old age approaching.  both are significantly shorter than kylo, but she recognizes instantly where the length of his face and his deep brown eyes come from.  “don’t get up,” the woman says hastily as rey makes to rise.  “leia organa,” she says and she takes rey’s extended hand and gives it a firm handshake.

“han solo,” the man at her side adds, similarly shaking rey’s hand.   _solo…_  that isn’t the same name as ren.  had he changed it?  

“i’m not sure where kylo is,” she says a little sheepishly and she watches as both leia and han glance at one another.

“he can run late sometimes,” han says with a forced airiness.  “something he gets from his old man.  don’t know when i’d ever get anywhere if this one didn’t have the internal clock more precise than a swiss watch.”

leia leans forward, her eyes intent, her face warm, “so–tell us how did you and–and kylo meet?”

“at a bar,” comes kylo’s voice and he’s there, shrugging out of his jacket as he slides into the booth next to her.  

“i gathered as much from our phone call,” leia says.  “i was referring to how you met more recently.”

“at the grocery store,” rey cuts in.  “completely by accident.”  she turns to look at kylo to give him a smile and catches a whiff of alcohol.  “and we went from there.  he was very insistent about not wanting to be a deadbeat.”

his eyes shoot to hers and they’re a little glazed–he’s definitely gotten himself drunk in preparation for this, something which she is going to try very hard not to be annoyed at–and under the table she feels his fingers tentatively brush against hers.

“we’re not sure what it’s going to be,” rey says at last turning away from kylo and looking at his parents, both of whose eyes are flicking between rey and their son, “but i think it’s a good starting point–to know that we both care a lot about her.”

“she’s a girl?” leia asks and her voice is a little thick.  rey nods, and gives her a half-smile.  there’s something about her expression that rey doesn’t quite understand as she looks between rey and kylo.  han’s face is even more unfathomable as he watches his son.  and kylo–kylo’s staring silently at his parents, not angry, not defensive.  he takes a sip of water and looks away and under the table, rey takes his hand, not sure what is going on at all because she doesn’t understand the secret silent conversations of parents and their children.

the dinner is not a relaxed one, but it is less tense than kylo had led rey to believe.  his parents seem perfectly nice–as nice as rey supposes she’d want for grandparents of her child.  han works in shipping, leia is a political consultant, and both live in the city.  (“close enough to babysit when you need it,” han had winked at her.)  the tensest moment is when his mom accidentally calls him ben and, blushing, he tells her he’d legally changed his name a few years back.  

as dinner ends, leia and rey go to the restroom together and it’s there, as they are washing their hands, that kylo’s mother says, “ben–kylo–mentioned that you don’t have parents.  is that true?”

rey nods, and leia tentatively reaches a hand out to rey.  “well, i know i can’t be your mother, and i don’t know what you’d need from a mother, but i’m here to help in anything i can help in.  i promise.”  and there it is–that shining honesty that she’s seen in kylo’s eyes too.  rey swallows and nods, and leia extends her arms and a moment later she’s hugging rey and rey takes a few shaky breaths.   _i know i can’t be your mother, and i don’t know what you’d need from a mother, but…_ but it feels nice all the same.

they find kylo and han at the front of the restaurant.  they aren’t speaking and rey notices that kylo doesn’t hug his parents goodbye as they go off in their separate directions.  

“how was it?” she asks him when they’re walking down the stairs to the subway station.

he looks at her and shakes his head slightly, though less as a negation and more like a dog trying to get the wet out of his hair.  “i–they–they weren’t disappointed.”  he sounds like he can’t believe it.  “my dad told me i was doing the right thing.  i–he–that’s never happened.  not in years.”

“you are doing the right thing,” rey tells him, taking his hand.  “i…i am glad you’re here.  you’ve made it easier in the past few weeks.”  suddenly her eyes are stinging and her throat is even tighter than when leia had hugged her in the bathroom.

“yeah.  me too.  i’m glad too.”

* * *

 

“where’s finn?  i like that finn,” dr. kanata says as she comes through the door about twenty minutes late.  in all of rey’s appointments, there has not ever been one where she hasn’t had to sit there waiting–in most cases longer than she’s actually working with the doctor.  

dr. kanata is short, and as she looks up at kylo–who had gotten to his feet when the door opened–the height difference is almost preposterous.  she gives him a glance up and down, eyes narrowing slightly behind her huge glasses as though trying to place where she’s seen him before.

“dr. kanata, this is kylo.  he’s the dad.”

maz turns and looks sharply at rey.  “i thought you said there wasn’t a dad.”

“the dad reappeared in the dairy isle,” rey shrugs.

“handy.”

she turns back to kylo and for all he’s probably close to two feet taller than her, he seems to shrink before her.  “well,” she says at last, “better late than never.  and better present than not.  you’d better make up for those months you left her high and dry, young man.”

“yes ma’am.”

“doctor,” dr. kanata corrects him.

“yes, doctor.”

she turns back to rey and gestures for her to lean back against the seat.  “let’s pull your sweater up,” and rey tugs up her sweater and the shirt underneath it so that her increasingly large belly is revealed.  the doctor puts on her latex gloves and presses into rey’s belly.  “uterus feels normal,” she says, smiling up at her.   “oh,” she makes an amused sound as the baby kicks out towards her pressing hands.  “she’s kicking up a storm, isn’t she?”

“she’s feisty,” rey smiles.  she glances at kylo.  his eyes are locked on the spot where dr. kanata’s hands are resting.  his eyes flick to rey’s, and she gives him a tentative smile.  he mirrors it back to her.

“and heart rate,” dr. kanata says, stepping away and grabbing a device like a microphone from the counter.  she rubs it against rey’s belly and a moment later she hears the practice ka-thump of her daughter’s heart.  rey’s eyes are back on kylo and she sees him swallow as he hears it.  “sounds good.”  she puts the device back on the counter.  “that’s it.  you,” she turns back to kylo.  “any questions?”  he shakes his head.  “see you in two weeks.”  and she disappears from the room as rey tugs her shirt and sweater back down over her belly.

“that’s it?” kylo asks.  “there’s no…”

“you missed the big ones,” she shrugs as she eases herself off the table.  it’s only as she lands on her feet that he lurches forward to help her.  “i hear the later ones are a little more…involved.  since i could pop at any minute.”

he nods and reaches a hand up to run his hand through his hair.  he looks around the room, eyes flicking from a poster on the wall that shows the different stages of fetal growth to the ultrasound device in the corner before landing on rey.  he takes a shaky breath.

“this is real.”

“it’s been real the whole time,” she says dryly, trying to keep the flicker of annoyance out of her voice.  he hasn’t been pregnant for the last six months, but it’s been  _very_  real for her ever since it happened.

“no, i meant–” he says and takes a deep breath.  “i just… you and me.  this is real.”  rey frowns, and he mumbles, “never mind.”

he turns away from her and grabs her coat from the chair next to the one he’d been sitting on and holds it open for her to step into.    

“did you mean–” rey begins, but he cuts her off.

“never mind, ok?”  his ears are red and he is avoiding her eyes.  she’s trying to suppress the growl of annoyance when suddenly, his eyes snap back to hers.  “no.  not never mind,” he says shakily.  “i meant that.  this feels real.  you and me.  and her too.  but also you and me.  it felt real the first second i met you and it feels real now.”

rey swallows and there are tears in her eyes.  “i like you,” she whispers.  “but this is a lot.  this is a lot, kylo.”

“yeah,” he says and his shoulders sag.  “yeah.  i know.”  she hates how suddenly defeated he looks.

“i’m not saying no,” rey says quickly, and he stops breathing.  “i just…be patient with me.  please?”

“i’m bad at patient,” he mumbles.  

“well, if you’re going to be a dad, you’d better learn how to be patient,” she whispers.  “practice with me.”

when he looks at her again, he nods slowly, his dark eyes determined.

* * *

“you know, for someone who you didn’t like enough to want to get the number of, you sure talk about him a lot,” finn says.

they’re walking up seventh avenue, because yes, rey is constantly tired, but the last few times she’s tried to take the train home no one got up for her to sit down and she ended up cramped and almost crying all the way up town.  it’s good excercise, and she doesn’t walk too fast or anything.  and finn is remarkably patient on the days he accompanies her home from work, her arm tucked through his just in case she gets tired or loses balance.

“i–” rey begins, but stops.  because it’s true.  she does.

she sees kylo a few times a week at this point.  he comes to all her doctor’s appointments, he comes to all her classes, he always takes her home in a cab afterwards and sometimes will even cook for her.  and he’s a good cook, too.  no one’s ever cooked her food the way ben does, like it’s something from a restaurant and not from a box.  not once has he broached the conversation from that first doctor’s appointment, where he had told her it felt real, that he wanted…

rey flushes.

“i–” she starts again but doesn’t even know what to say.

“you,” finn says and there’s an amused tone to his voice.  “you still haven’t introduced me.”

she freezes.  that can’t be true.  she’s met kylo’s parents, has gone shopping for baby things with his mom, has even met his boss one time when she met him at his office before an appointment.

but she’d never introduced him to finn?

“really?”

“nope,” finn says.  “i couldn’t pick him out in a lineup.”

rey digs her phone out of her pocket and texts him.

_you haven’t met finn?_

she sees him start typing immediately.

_no.  not yet._

_you should._

_am i at that stage?_

she frowns at her phone.  what does that mean?

she looks up at finn and asks, slowly, “is it a big deal if i’m introducing you to my…baby daddy?” better to joke about it than admit to whatever riot of emotions are currently dancing around in her heart.

“yeah, i’d say so,” finn says.  “he’s part of your life and so am i.”  

_yeah.  i think so._

“is he trying to get with you or is it just awkward?” finn asks bluntly and rey almost jumps out of her skin.  she looks up at him and knows she looks like a deer in the headlights.  finn’s face is unreadable.  he’s never unreadable.

“i…he wants to be.  he’s being patient with me while i figure that out.”

“for the baby?” finn asks.

“no–i think.  i think for me.  which is why i’m–” she can’t say it, she can’t say it, she can’t say it, but she refuses to be afraid, “why i’m nervous.  he’s been good to me and it’s a lot.”

finn wraps an arm around her shoulder and squeezes her to him.  “observer’s advice,” he tells her.  “it’s never not going to be a lot.  you’re having a kid.  stop using that excuse.”

“you haven’t even met him yet,” she mumbles.  “you might hate him.”

“then i’ll give you different advice after that,” he says.  “but i’ve never seen you cut yourself off so much in one conversation, so i think you know what you want.”

he’s right.

she does.

she looks down at her phone screen.  ben has texted her a simple thumb’s up.  he’s trying to give her space.  she’d asked him to give her space.

_what are you doing tonight?_

she thinks it’s the first time she’s texted him to ask.  her stomach ties itself in knots that have nothing to do with the baby growing inside her.


	20. exes meeting again after not speaking for years au & going through a divorce au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> anonymous prompt

kylo notices two things he should have noticed earlier.  

the first is that she is not wearing her hair the same way she did for the first three years of their marriage, her three little buns because she found it ventilated her head best; the second is that she is not wearing her rings.

“oh,” he says and he sits down because he’s not entirely sure what else to do.  he can’t take his eyes off her.

rey doesn’t say anything.  she does not sit.  she does not move at all.  her arms are crossed over her chest.  he can’t even see the pale band on her fingers that is on his whenever he takes his ring off during really messy tasks.  how long before had she stopped wearing them?

“i thought…” he begins, but stops.  it’s all stupid.  it’s all so stupid.  anger flares in him because of course it does.  he’d been an idiot.  “i thought when you said you wanted time that would be for us to work things out.”

“i thought so too,” rey says.  “but i guess that’s not how it turned out.”

“i can see that.”  he does not look away from her.  he wants to memorize every line in her face, every single twitching muscle as she, like everyone else in his life, decides he’s not worth the time in the end.

“don’t be like that,” she snaps.  

“like what?” he demands.  “angry?  upset?  what were you expecting?”

“this,” she spits at him.  “exactly this, i suppose.  which is why this needs to be over.  i can’t deal with it anymore.”

“deal with what, precisely? because you’ve been gone for the last three years.  we’ve barely talked for the last three years.  you wanted your damn space.  you haven’t had to deal with any of _this_ ,” he gestures at himself, “for three years.  that was your choice.”

“i can’t be the siphon for your darkness,” she says.  “i can’t.  i can’t do it, i can’t handle it.”

“yeah, i noticed that, believe it or not.  you start to notice thing when your wife leaves you.  which is why i’ve been going to therapy since you left.”

rey stares at him.  “what?”

“yeah.  working through some really fan-fucking-tastic emotional shit i can tell you.  it’s not on you to fix that shit, it’s on me.  but i _will_  be angry if you come up here asking for a divorce when we haven’t seen each other in three years.  because that hurts.  a lot.”

“why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, her voice suddenly very quiet.  he can’t tell if it’s an angry quiet or a hurt quiet and he takes a deep breath, counting to ten, calming himself.  this is rey–the only person who’s ever been able to calm him down.  but he’d been able to start calming himself down recently and if there was ever a time to prove that…

“because you wanted space,” he responds, his voice equally quiet.  “because it never came up.  because you never asked the kind of question that would lead to it.  because i couldn’t think of a way to bring it up without it feeling manipulative somehow.  and i know i’m a lot of things that are hard to handle–i hope i’m never manipulative.”

his therapist had thought he was being crazy when he’d said that.  

“ _it’s not manipulative to tell your estranged wife the truth.”_

_“i know that.”_

_“so why aren’t you telling her? you say that you have always been honest with her.  why is this the first lie?”_

_“it’s not a lie.”  
_

_“then what is it?”  
_

“so you hoped i’d just come back at some point, and you’d be…”

“less likely to put my shit on you, yes,” he replies evenly, still staring at her.  she is trying to hide her confusion from him, trying to be unreadable, but if he can read anyone, he can read rey.  “more able to help you deal with your own shit, because i wasn’t as good at that as i thought i was.”

“my own shit?” rey sounds bewildered now.

he rolls his eyes.  “oh come on,” he says.  “you lie to yourself constantly.  it’s wonderful in some cases–that you can be that optimistic, that compassionate.  but it’s downright dangerous at other times and you know it.  you’re lying to yourself right now.”

her eyebrows shoot up and the bewildered expression is gone from her face.

“am i?” she asks coolly.

“yes.”

“oh?”

“is this really what you want?” he asks and there isn’t a drop of rage in his voice.  if anything, he sounds gentle–gentle because rey’s had a hard enough life–they both have–and for rey, he had sworn long ago that he would always try to be gentle.  “just a signed piece of paper and all of this gone?  you and me and what we had–you want to give up on it?  i know that i’m not the _if you love her, let her go type_ , and never have been–but you?  are you really done?  because you do still love me.” and as he says the words he sees the way her eyes glow at him, the way they always have, burning bright amidst the confusion on her face.

she doesn’t reply immediately, and his lungs expand.  “go on.  say it.”

“oh fuck you, kylo,” she mutters but she’s crossing the room and she’s sitting down next to him on the couch.  she smacks him across the chest in frustration, but even as he twists to grab her arm before she does it again, her lips are on hers and they are so hungry and all the pain fades, all the anger fades, because nothing exists in the world beyond rey.


	21. writer and editor au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> prompted by [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)

_bombastic._  

_look, your thesis is good here, but your argument is really really unsound.  we can’t publish like this.  you need to rework with some less twisted logic._

_this is good–harsh in just the right way.  but you undercut it with all the twisted logic mentioned above._

_just delete this.  it’s petty and personal and distracts from your argument._

_ok you’re just wrong here, but that won’t be an issue when you rework your argument._

kylo stares at the words written in red in the margins of his word document.  it’s the first time the editorial staff has ever sent one of his articles back and he can’t help but feel wildly affronted by it.  how long has he been working here?  who is this rey–her picture conveniently provided in a little headshot next to her email, smiling at the camera–to tell him that his writing is _bombastic?_

he gets to his feet and kicks his chair out of the way and moves his way through the office towards where the editorial team is sitting.  he sees her sitting there, typing into her computer, a slight smile on her face as the words flow out from her fingers onto the screen before her.  

“bombastic?” he demands and she looks up and he almost feels bad that the smile–it’s such a pretty smile, now that he’s seeing it in person–slips slightly as he looms over her, fury rolling off him.  

to his surprise, she leans back in her chair and doesn’t seem a little bit apologetic.  “have you read your prose?” she asks him dryly.  “bombastic is the least of your worries in that article.  it’s not going in until you’ve reworked it.”

he narrows his eyes at her and before he can open his mouth, she’s continuing.

“you’re inconsistent from paragraph to paragraph, and while i do get the sense that you do genuinely mean the words on the page, which–i’ll leave my own personal opinions at the door about how fucked up _that_  is–it reads more like an example of cognitive dissonance than an op-ed.  so go back and rework it, and then we’ll talk.”

he can’t help but respect her spine, and the way she refuses to break eye-contact with him even as he stands over her.  

“we’ll talk more later,” he tells her and he’s sure it sounds like a threat, but he’s not sure he intends it as one.

“oh i look forward to it,” rey replies.  she turns back to her computer and it takes him until she says, “we’re done, aren’t we?” before he turns and flees back to his desk.


	22. “I’ll find her and bring her home. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon divergence
> 
> prompted by [@haraldskaer](http://haraldskaer.tumblr.com/)

“no,” poe’s voice rings hard through the room.

“we don’t have resources, poe,” his mother snaps.

“you want me to send the former supreme leader back into the heart of the first order?  so he can go and give all his pals all our details?  no.  no way.”

he stares at his hands.  they are ungloved, and the sleeves of his shirt are white for the first time in years.  he is breathing and trying to remember the feel of her hand on his–just the tips of her fingers, brushing across his skin.  he knows what he is, what he has been–understands why dameron wouldn’t trust him.  he feels the hate rolling off dameron every time he looks at him.  he can bear that–there’s an honesty to dameron’s hatred, something personal.  

“who better to go?” leia asks.

“finn, for one,” poe snaps.  “he’s infiltrated the first order twice now.”

 _and if he’s caught he’ll have a hard time getting her out,_ he thinks.  there isn’t a person in the first order who can hold him.  

they’re holding rey though. 

he closes his eyes again.  he breathes.  he wills that strange muffled sensation in his ears that connects him to her to happen.  but it doesn’t.   _unconscious,_ he thinks. 

“we can’t bring finn back from his mission,” leia says.  “it’s too important.  we  _need_  him where he is.”

“and we want to send the supreme leader back to–” poe begins, banging his fist on the table.

“enough of that,” leia cuts him off.  

“general, i know he’s your son, but maybe you’re blinded by that,” poe snaps.

“and maybe you’re blinded by it too,” his mother responds calmly. 

“he has tortured me, general.”

it’s like he’s a boy again, his parents arguing about him as though he’s not sitting right there.

he reaches for rey again.  he wills himself to smell the sea breeze she carried with her into his mind.  

“maybe i’m both,” he says quietly, and poe and his mother both look at him.  “i’m both your son,” he says to his mother, “and the beast that ripped your mind apart.  not one or another.  both.”

rey would understand.  she understands the darkness in him, even when she doesn’t want to.  “either you trust me or you don’t,” he says to poe.  “but that’s irrelevant.  better to rely on what you know to be true of her and the situation she’s in–and what you know i’m capable of.”  poe’s face goes dark with anger even as his eyes flash with a recognition that he knows means he’s got him.

“i’ll find her and bring her home.”  rey’s never had a home, never had a family.  “i promise.”


	23. “You came back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: angst, i'm sorry
> 
> prompted by [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)

The General’s words are so quiet that they are barely audible, and Rey has never seen her eyes shine so brightly before.  She has Ben’s eyes, when he has been on the verge of tears.   _Please_ , she remembers him begging.  (Had his mother begged too?   _Please.  Please come back to me, my little boy._ )

He swallows and his lips twitch.  He is kneeling and cuffed because they don’t trust him, but he does not struggle against the bonds.  And Rey watches as the General sits down in her seat right in front of her son, her hands crossed on her lap, unable to take her eyes off him.  

 _Come back!_ Rey had shouted after her mother, screaming until her throat was raw, screaming until she was coughing from the dry sandy heat that was so uncharitable to her breaking heart.   _They were filthy junk traders.  Sold you off for drinking money._ Her mother would never look at her the way that Leia Organa was looking at her son, pain and guilt and hope and relief and fear all mixed together in pools of burning warmth.  

She turns to leave. She does not need to be there–is not needed there at all.  She does not need to watch as it becomes so painfully clear that she is not Leia’s daughter because Leia has never looked at her like that, never will.  No one ever has, and no one ever will.  And Ben…

Ben turned for his mother, not for her.   _You came back,_ the General had whispered and he had.  


	24. defeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-compliant

the minute he ignites the lightsaber kylo’s heart stops. 

his uncle’s saber is green, he remembers it, he has woken in a cold sweat with that green blade hovering over him how many times since it happened?  but the blade in his hand is blue.  his grandfather’s blade, the one that he and rey had both reached for but had neither of them been able to truly claim.

he’d known she’d taken it when he woke up alone.

but she had given it back to his uncle.  

_she knows he wants me dead, knows he tried to kill me–i told her the truth but she gave him the blade anyway._

_does she think he can save my soul where she failed?_

he doesn’t want his soul saved.  why does everyone think they need to save him from himself?  don’t they understand that this is  _him_  as he truly is that all of them keep hoping that he’ll be something else and then get angry at him for their own dashed hopes?

 _she’s no better than the rest of them,_ he thinks savagely as he pelts towards his uncle, every ounce of the raw, untamed, fury that snoke had seen in him.  maybe he should have listened to snoke and killed the girl if she’d wanted him dead enough to give the lightsaber to his uncle.  _i’ll destroy her, and you, and all of it._

…

“see you around, kid,” and he fades into nothing and kylo goes numb.  not the numb of rey appearing before him, seeping into his consciousness like a soothing balm, cool control he’d never really been able to grasp though he was older and trained and she was just a girl.  no, it’s as though his entire body has gone cold, his ears are buzzing, there’s a metalic taste in his mouth.  the last time his uncle called him kid was before he was training, and his father…  _see you around, kid_ and ruffling his hair as he’d turned and made his way up the gangplank of the falcon.

he does his best to burn away the numb.  he does his best to pull kylo ren back out of the tinny adrenaline that he can taste in his mouth, the way his hands are still shaking.

when he leads his men into the cave he knows it’s too late.  he tries to summon his anger because anger is where his power comes from his uncle had tried to keep him from it but his uncle had been weak–weak enough to defeat him from across the stars, twisting the entire fight to get him to do exactly what he–there that was enough to make him angry, because everyone talked about how perfect and good his uncle was but his uncle was a liar, a snake, a hypocrite.   _skywalker was weak.  he destroyed himself and i survived._

the room he finds himself in is empty but there’s something on the floor, glowing gold.  as he bends to pick it up  _see you around kid_  it fades in his hand and he goes numb again–but a deeper numb this time because it’s both numbs.  he looks up and she’s there.  she hasn’t noticed him yet–he thinks he will always notice her first–but she’s there and the last thought falls into place.

she can’t have given his uncle the saber.  

she can’t have.  he wasn’t there, he was wherever he’d fled to to avoid kylo ren’s vengeance.  he was across the galaxy and rey she’s here, she’s on the falcon, she’s  _blow that piece of junk OUT OF THE SKY_  alive.  

her eyes are hard when she looks at him.  she doesn’t say a word, she just closes the door in his face.  

she has called him a monster, yet somehow her silence is more damning, and he swallows.

defeat is hard to swallow.


	25. “Are you kidding me? We’re not fine!” & “Oh my God. You’re in love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> prompted by [@pythiaspeaks](http://pythiaspeaks.tumblr.com/)

“no.  no no.  that one.”

“which one?”

“that one there.  that i’m pointing to.”

“the–”

“blue one, yes.  come on hurry up.”

“i’m working on it.  we’re fine.”

“are you kidding me?  we’re not fine.  hurry  _up_.”

“you’re starting to stress me out.”

“then maybe you’ll see the urgency of  _poisonous gas filling the hold_.”

the sirens that are blasting their warning stop and rey sags with relief against the hyperdrive.  “finally,” she mutters.  then she rounds on him.  “look, i know you don’t like this ship very much, but i’d hope that you at  _least_  would want to keep us alive in it.”

then she catches the look on his face, and throws the rag she’d been using to mop up battery liquid at him.  “you were making fun of me,” she snaps.

“look, this piece of junk is a piece of junk, but if you think i don’t know how to fix her… han solo cared more about this ship than me when i was growing up.  i know which wires will do what in the compressor.”  

rey glares at him, which only makes his lips twitch in a smile.  

“so you were just having a little bit of fun.”

“so it seems.”

“at my expense.”

“not really  _at_  your expense.”

“while i thought we were about to asphyxiate in the middle of space and die tragically before you got to see your mother again even after i promised her i’d get you home safely?”

“you’re the one who didn’t have faith in me,” he says, extending a hand to help pull her out of the hyper drive.

she takes his hand and as he pulls her up, she said, “i wonder why i might not have faith in…” he pulls her very close and the word, “you,” gets lost in her throat because she’s suddenly feeling very warm.  

the amused look on his face falters, and his expression is suddenly, so very serious.  rey’s not sure that either of them is breathing.  

 _oh_ , she thinks as it belatedly occurs to her that she’s still holding his hand.   _oh._


	26. 'tell me she's lying'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> prompted by [@lanteanwraiths](http://lanteanwraiths.tumblr.com/)

_tell me she’s lying._

rey doesn’t lie.  it’s the thing he’s always been fasinated about in her.  snoke lied.  luke lied.  his mother–ever the politician–lied.  his father–it’s not my fault–lied.  but rey?

_i saw you turn._

that had been a lie.  he hadn’t turned.  he’d seen a lie as well: she hadn’t turned.  but that was a falsehood that stemmed from misunderstanding.  the burning ferocity in her gaze does not misunderstand.

 _tell me you’re lying,_ his eyes beg.   _tell me this is all a lie–that all of it was a lie, that i built dreams of our future on a lie._

 _there is no hope in you,_ he still hears her say, the words ringing in his ears even though the room itself is silent.   _i thought you might not be a beast.  i was wrong._

_please be lying._

_please._

she’s the only person who’s ever told him the truth, who’s ever had unbridled faith in him.  the only person he’s ever wanted to lie to him.

she turns.  

she walks.  he feels prickles in his eyes and a lump in his throat and is it him crying, or her?  sometimes he thinks he can feel her pains in his body.  or maybe that is sympathy, maybe that is wistfulness.

“rey,” he calls after her.  she stops.  she does not turn.  “you’re either a liar, or you’re wrong.”  he doesn’t know why he says it.   _i feel it again.  the pull to the light._

“prove me wrong, then,” she says and her voice is definitely thick with tears.  “prove me wrong, ben.  don’t be beyond hope.”

 


	27. “Oh my God. You’re in love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> prompted by [@lariren-shadow](http://lariren-shadow.tumblr.com/) and [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)

“sleep,” she tells finn. “i’ll sit with her for a while.”

finn has bags under his eyes and looks unbelievably exhausted, but he gives rey a smile and a hug, and goes off to find a bunk.

rey takes the seat he’d occupied next to the girl she doesn’t know, the one whose hand finn’s been holding ever since they’d all loaded up onto the falcon.  _stop holding my hand_

_when we touched hands i saw your future_

she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.  it’s easier to be angry with him when he’s there in her mind’s eye, looking like his world has collapsed.   _of course it’s collapsed!_ she had wanted to scream at him.   _it’s not a future worth building!_ but she had known he wouldn’t hear it and besides–what did it matter?  he would have killed them all, would have killed luke.  he couldn’t claim she was nothing but not to him if the things she loved were to be destroyed.  she is the things she loves.

but when he’s not there, when she can’t see his face, can only remember the bright shining hope she’d had for him, she just feels…empty.

the girl stirs and opens her eyes and rey straightens.  “do you need water?” she asks.

“where am i?”

“you’re on the millenium falcon.  i’m rey.”

“you’re…” her sparkle.  “oh! you came back!”  there’s such a sweetness to her energy that rey feels her face crack into a smile despite herself.  “finn will be so happy!”  she pauses and looks around for him.

“i made him go rest,” rey tells her.  “he looked exhausted, but he didn’t want to leave you.”  pink pops into the girl’s cheeks, and she gives rey a nervous smile.

“he missed you.  he almost defected for you,” she tells rey quietly.  “i…”

“what’s your name?” rey asks.

“oh!  i’m rose.  i–sorry–i should have said.”

“that’s all right,” rey says at once.  both of them are speaking in such high pitched voices, as though frightened of hurting the other, as though worried the other will… will what?   _he almost defected for you._

_and would i have defected for ben?  if he’d said he’d save the fleet?_

and in that moment, she looks at rose and knows that–whatever the girl is worried about, it is something she imagines  _i saw you turn_  and not a reality  _let the past die kill it if you have to_.  she loves finn, that is the truth of it.  he was the first person who ever came back for her.  and she wishes, oh how desperately she wishes, that she could be as…as…

“tell me about your adventure,” rey says.   _distract me, please._

“will you tell me about yours?” rose asks.

“you go first,” rey responds, and rose dives off, telling her of canto bight and the horrible wealth the likes of which rey can’t even imagine.  she tells her of dj, and breaking onto the supremacy, and the way finn killed phasma, and their mad escape to crait.  she tells her of finn, tells her of how he had tried to convince dj not to take the necklace she shared with her sister, how she saved him and how he saved her.  

“and you?  what was luke skywalker like?”

rey gulps.  she looks around.  there’s no one there–most people are sleeping after a long and stressful set of events.  “can you keep a secret?” rey asks her.  she’s feeling daring.  but another small part of her wonders–why  _wouldn’t_  she tell someone?  what would happen if the truth came out?  that she tried to do what luke had done with his own father?  that she had  _failed_?

rose nods.  “to the grave,” she responds and there’s an intensity to her gaze that…that…

rey’s never had a sister.  but rose did.  

words spill from her lips, quick and hushed.  she tells rose of luke’s disillusionment, of the strange connection of the force, of snoke, of fighting at ben’s side, of watching as everything fell apart in her own hands, of how she’d seen him again, kneeling, crying in the base at crait, and how even now she couldn’t tell if she dreaded seeing him again or…

“oh my god.  you’re in love.”  rose’s hand is gentle on her leg, and when rey looks at her, her eyes sting.

it is devestating.

rey is the things she loves.  and that means, there’s some small part of her, that is him as well.


	28. “Get down, now!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> prompted by [@rosefairchild](https://rosefairchild.tumblr.com/)

“get down,  _now!”_ she hears finn yell.  she hears him, but it’s so far away, and off in the distance she sees a tall man in a dark uniform–off in the distance and so close, the sounds around her distorting.  

“rey!” finn screams but she’s moving forward now, blocking the blasts being fired at her with ease.  it’s as if they’re aiming at her blades, not at her.  

“are you coming to face me,” he asks her.

“don’t do this,” she breathes.  “you don’t want to.  i can see it.  don’t make this happen.”

“skywalker didn’t succeed, what makes you think you will,” he sneers at her.  “you can’t save my soul if i don’t want to be saved.”

“i don’t want to save your soul,” she says and she’s so close to him now.  she’ll be passing him soon.  what will happen when that happens?  she’ll still see him off in the distance and he’ll be behind her as well.  “don’t do this, ben,” she whispers.  “please.”

his eyes narrow.  “i begged,” he whispers back.  “you made me beg.”

“and i begged too.  there isn’t a thing you’ve done that i haven’t also done.  neither of us wants this.  there has to be another way.  don’t make this happen. don’t let this happen.”

he raises a hand an the blasts stop.  

behind her she hears finn shouting for her again and she raises a hand as well and the cry behind her dies in his throat.

“we fight for what we love,” he says.  “it’s the only thing that’s worth fighting for.   so we duel for it.  i win, you come with me.” he’s convinced he’ll win, rey feels it pulsing through the force.  angrily, she shows him the slash across his face, bleeding, and the memory of kicking him in the chest.  he inclines his head.  “you win–do what you will with me.”

but she shakes her head and anger flashes across her face.  “neither of us will be content with that.  you have to want it, ben, or else it’s not a victory.  and i have to want it.”

“and yet neither of us will budge.  how do we proceed if neither of us will move?”

rey closes her eyes.  

“i don’t like this,” she tells him.  and when she opens her eyes, she ignites her saber.


	29. “Give me one reason why I should.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon-divergence, thoughts of suicide
> 
> anonymous prompt

 

finn’s eyes are hard as he glares at kylo, and kylo feels his own chest compressing.  words like _traitor_  swirl in his mind but he has to let them go.  finn is a traitor, and kylo ren is a traitor too–a bigger one.  he knows more about the first order.  he should.  since he led it.  _why should i trust you?_

 _because i love her,_ he wants to tell finn, but something tells him that will only get him scorn, that will only make the man angrier.  he trusts that instinct.  it’s what he’d do if fn-2187 told him that.

“because i’d die for her,” he says instead, voice clipped, burning honesty into each word.  

finn looks at him and there’s still anger in his eyes, he can see that.  the scars on his back and on his shoulder that kylo ren had given him will be with him for the rest of his life since he couldn’t heal them with the force.  kylo could have healed the scar on his face.  it had taken him so long to understand why he’d kept it.  

“that’ll do,” finn says at last.  “if only barely.  and you’d better mean it.  because if she dies and you live, i’ll kill you.”

 _if she dies and i live, i’ll kill myself_ , he doesn’t say.  he knows that’s true too, but knows that the man standing before him will think him mocking.  the situation is too precarious and rey too precious to risk any antagonism.

 _if she dies i die._ but that is not the end he wants. 


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: weird idk but i like it
> 
> prompted by an anon and [@ladyserenitty](https://ladyserenitty.tumblr.com/)

_what do i get if i win?_

_you get the blaster your father gave me–the one i shot you with;  you get the beacon your mother gave me to guide me home, though i have never known what home is beyond the shell of a dead weapon; you get the staff that kept me alive on jakku; you get the crystals i scavenged from your grandfather’s lightsaber when i would not join you and you broke my heart; you get the air i breathe, the blood that keeps me alive, the way i see the world through eyes that will stay dry as i give to you these pieces of me i have carefully collected and you will have won, leaving me with nothing. but_ _what do i get if_ i _win?_

_you get me.  it is not a fair trade, but it is the only thing of value i have to offer._


	31. gimme, gimme, gimme

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: m
> 
> tags: canon-divergence
> 
> [insp.](https://galacticprideandprejudice.tumblr.com/post/170017199492/leiafox-pretty-sure-rian-johnson-timed-this)

there are no words spoken, no apologies, no imploring, no “we shouldn’t be doing this”.  there is just the heat they’d felt when first they’d danced.

it had felt like dancing, moving as one though rey had always imagined dancing as face to face rather than back to back.  (the dance they dance now is face to face, though it, in its own way, is not what rey imagined dancing to be).  dancing was supposed to be synchronized, movement to music, and as they’d swung their sabers, she had felt their lungs moving at the same time, their hearts beating at the same time, had sensed his adrenaline twining with her own as they’d fought, as they’d killed, as they’d lived.

rey thinks of that when his lips are on her neck, when her hands are threaded through his hair, when her hips straddle his own.  better to think of the look in his eyes after he’d used his grandfather’s lightsaber to kill the last guard, the fire in his eyes as he’d gazed at her than what had come after, that dark reality that he had chosen for them, rather than the one she would have brought to him.  his lips chase those shadows away as she gasps and her hand reaches down between them and rubs along the length of him, hot and hard and perfectly right in her hand.  she can feel the throbbing, twitching, quivering of him in her own loins just as she’d felt his heart beating in hers as she’d fought a man with two electrified axes.  she can feel him inside her though he isn’t there just yet.  

this is a different dance.  their breath is the only music, and there is no intermittent wail of weapon on weapon.  just the two of them breathing, the force humming all around them as his hands find her breasts, thumbing her nipples until her toes curl and her head falls back.  between his hands on her breasts and hers on his cock, rey feels everything, she feels alive.  _passion is a thing of the dark side,_ she remembers someone saying.  she can’t remember who, and she doesn’t care to.  she has known that kylo is more dark than light–has known it since first she saw him, prowling through a forest at her with his red, pulsing blade.  she doesn’t care about that, can’t think about that, won’t think about that because him against her and her against him–it will carry her through the darkness until she feels light again.

how can passion be darkness when she feels such light as she guides him into her?  what a bright future she’d seen for them.  what a light future she lives with him now as she takes him in.  surely, that future is not lost to them, surely, surely he may yet turn, and what love or lust she feels for him now–she’ll feel in truth when next they are in one another’s presence.

 _give me,_ she thinks in time with his thrusting hips, in time with his pulsing heart, in time with his heaving breath,  _give me, give me…._

but what?  she doesn’t know.  she is lost in the feel of him, lost in the secrecy of it all, the heady reality of him sneaking to her after midnight that they might dance together one more time.


	32. sweetheart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> gifset [here](https://galacticprideandprejudice.tumblr.com/post/170203913721/she-hates-being-called-sunshine-even-if-hes-not)

she hates being called sunshine.  even if he’s not mocking her, she says it feels mocking, so he stops immediately because the last thing he wants is for her eyes to flash angry at him like that. she has an angry underbelly beneath all that optimism and he can stomach his own rage, but hers directed at him when it’s coming from within her rather than from without…he doesn’t like that.

he doesn’t know  _why_  he is so driven to call her pet names.  dear and darling and babe fall easily from his tongue and make him feel as though he’s being disgustingly sweet, some saccharine parody of himself.  but she has always been able to push him to be something other than what he’s been.  she makes him want to believe in himself in a way that he  _thought_  he already had.  and he needs her to know that, needs her to know that she matters more than her piece of shit parents made her think.  sometimes, when he holds her, he feels like his heart is going to stop.  sometimes, when he looks at her, he feels like he’ll live forever.  he needs her to know that.  needs her never to doubt it.

it slips out of him when they’re arguing.  it’s not a fight, more his stubbornness clashing with hers.  part of what he loves about her is that she never backs down, that she’d wrestle him to the dirt either metaphorically or physically when she thought he was wrong, which she does, and frequently.  he’s rolling his eyes and snapping, “you’re the one who picked me, remember sweetheart?”

his throat catches.  

_you said you wanted to be around when i made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart._

_ sorry, sweetheart.  we haven't got time for anything else. _

_ he’s the brains, sweetheart. _

sweetheart.

“ben?”  


he hadn’t realized how still he’d gone as memories of his father flooded into him, the playful arguments with his mother–and the serious ones.

“ben, what’s wrong?”  


she steps towards him, her arms around wrapping low and hands reaching higher up his back.  instinct takes one of his arms around her waist while the other supports her upper back, his hand cradling her head while he holds her and the heart in his saccharine parody of a chest beats wildly while he tries to breathe.


	33. coffee shop au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: m
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> gifset for the first segment [here](https://galacticprideandprejudice.tumblr.com/post/170020556257/hes-supposed-to-be-drawing-for-his-still-life).
> 
> as with the accidental pregnancy au, if i expand this it'll be within this chapter rather than in additional ones.

he’s supposed to be drawing for his still life class–the arrangement of coffee mug, of half-eaten breakfast, of sugar packets on a not-quite-clean diner table.  he’s not supposed to draw people at all this semester, really.  

he tells himself it’s just practice, that he’ll get his assignment done some other time.  but one sitting turns into two, into three, into eight and he can’t  _quite_  get the shape of her nose right and it’s driving him crazy.

* * *

 

“did you draw this?” 

one of the paper napkins he’d sketched her on the day before and crumpled up and put in his pocket lands on the table and he stares at it because the most he’s ever said to her– _ever_ –is requesting one more black coffee and maybe a lemon scone if they are close enough to fresh out of the oven and only if they have poppy seeds on them too.  

“i mean,” she says before he can think of what to say and there’s that hazel color, the one that makes him wish he could actually paint her because the way the green chases the brown in her eyes deserves to be in museums for centuries to come, “i mean i know you did.  you’re the only one who comes in to draw.”  

there’s a tentative smile on her face and it’s when she says, “you’re good, you know,” that he realizes he still hasn’t said a word.  “no one’s ever drawn me before.”  she tucks some of her soft brown hair behind her ears.  

“no?” he asks her, and she shakes her head.  

“can i keep this?” she asks, gesturing to the crumped napkin.

“yeah, it’s yours,” he hears himself say and she beams at him before turning and making her way back to the counter.  he watches as she folds it lovingly between thin fingers and tucks it into the pocket of her apron.

“hey!” he calls after her–his voice carrying a little too loudly and everyone in the coffee shop turns to stare at him.  she cocks her head and he feels heat in his face as his heart starts pounding wildly in his throat.  he’s going to regret this.  he really doesn’t have time to do this.  he’s supposed to be focusing on still life. 

she comes back over when the words stick in his throat, mistaking his silence for nervousness in the face of everyone’s curiosity.  he had forgotten they were there as soon as she turned to look back at him.  “can you sit for me sometime?” he asked.  “for a real sketch?  not a napkin.”

her smile is like the sun in winter and ben doesn’t even remember the words coming out of her mouth–just that she’s writing her phone number on a napkin because he’s too blinded by her brightness.

* * *

_what does sitting for you mean?_

the text comes through as they’re finalizing a time for her to come by his apartment (he has good southern light and tomorrow’s weather’s supposed to be good).  he frowns and sees that she’s typing on the other end of the phone.

_like–it’s not artist code for me being naked, right?_

_i’d be ok with that, but i want to know how prepared to be._

ben swallows.  he has, until this moment, avoided the thought of drawing her naked.  but now, of course, the image fills his mind, her sitting at his table with a teacup and a serene expression while he tries to capture the fact that her lips and her nipples are the same color with only charcoal.

 _no, it’s just you sitting.  clothed.  could be a portrait or something else._ _figure drawing is when you’re naked._

 _gotcha_.

* * *

he shouldn’t have asked her to sit.  she’d shown up all perky with coffee for him and had seemed ready to chat about everything and he has to keep telling her “i can’t get your lips if you keep talking.”

it had been a fool’s mission to turn her into art when she already is.  but here he is, trying to capture the light in her eyes as she stares at him.  because she is.  and why does she have that light in her eyes when she stares at him?  no one ever has light in their eyes when they stare at him.  usually a dark expression crosses their face.

she has such beautiful eyes, the way the color bleeds green into brown.  not that he can capture that with just his pencil, but he can try to capture how they gleam, try to capture the way his stomach lurches whenever she looks at him, which in this case is nonstop for several hours.  it’s never done that before.

when he’s done, he shows her the sketch and she stares at it, mouth slightly open.  then he sees heat creep up her cheeks and when she looks at him her eyes are even brighter–this time with tears.

 _oh god, she hates it,_ he thinks, as she gets to her feet and suddenly she’s wrapping her arms around him.  it’s an awkward hug with her standing and him sitting.  “it’s lovely,” she tells him.

“keep it,” he croaks out.  “it’s yours.”  but she shakes her head.

“this is how you see me?” she asks him and he frowns at the question, but she doesn’t wait for an answer.  “you keep it.  i–i want you to have it.”

he shows her to the door and she gives him another shy smile and maybe i he’d asked her to sit for him naked she wouldn’t be looking at him as though he understands his very soul because instead of her eyes he would have drawn her breasts or something.  they’re probably perfect too.  everything about her is perfect.

“sit for me again?” he asks her.

“i’d like that,” she whispers, and is gone.

* * *

the semester ends.  it always does.  ben goes home for the new year, and does his best not to throttle his dad.  (that he only breaks one glass–and that it’s an accident–he thinks is a sign of intense restraint.)  he goes not because he wants to–not really.  he goes because that’s what you do.  you go home.  even if you don’t much want to see your parents, or your uncle.  staying on campus might be nice, but he’d have to answer every question of “why aren’t you going home?” that’d come his way and that–that would be worse.

“you seem different,” his mother tells him as he’s packing his suticase back up the night before his flight back to school.

“yeah?”

“you’ve been calmer.”

ben shrugs and looks around the room.  his eyes land on his sketchpad.  it’s open, and he’s been working on a picture of rey from memory.  his mother follows his gaze.

“who is she?”

“just someone i draw sometimes,” he says.  “a friend.”

he hears the way his mother sucks air into her body.  he’s never talked about friends before.  he has them–oh yes.  the other students in the ren art program are friends of a sort.  but not like rey.  he doesn’t get all glowy and warm thinking about them.  he doesn’t spend his vacation thinking about them, muchless drawing them.

“she’s pretty.  you draw her well.”

the words hang in the air, heavier than either ben or his mother wants them to be.  and ben doesn’t know how to respond.

* * *

ben’s taking figure drawing this spring.  he spends four hours every tuesday staring at the naked body of whichever student has signed up through the jobs portal to sit before a bunch of stranger art students.  they alternate between two models, a male and a female.  

rey sees a sketch one day at the cafe and cocks her head, looking at it.  “who’s that?”

“model for my class,” he says, blushing.  she’d asked about drawing her naked once a while ago, before she’d sat for him that first time, before they’d become  _friends_.  he hasn’t forgotten.  he wonders if she has.

she nods, and he watches as her eyes flick across the page, tracing lines he’d drawn in lead the day before.

“you don’t like her,” she says.

ben stiffens defensively.  “she’s a good model.”

“no–i meant,” rey pauses, reconsidering her words. “the picture is flat.  you don’t know her.  you aren’t getting to know her as you draw.  it’s different from when you draw me.”

“portraits of your face are different than portraits of the body,” ben replies slowly.  “it’s a different skill.  i’m learning–”

“but you don’t connect to her.  her body is the figure.  she’s not a person.  she’s a body.”

ben stares at rey.  rey studies mechanical engineering.  rey has never taken an art class in her life.  her main experience of art is seeing the pictures he draws of her face when they can both find time in their busy schedules.  and rey had said the same thing that professor snoke had said.

“would you sit for me?” he blurts out and he feels the blood flow into his head.  it pounds in his ears, it heats his face but he doesn’t look away.  “please?”

rey licks her lips.  it’s not sexual–her lips are just dry but he can’t remember the last time his heart beat this much.

“all right,” she says.  “yeah.  i could, i think.”

* * *

this can only be categorized as a bad idea, ben thinks, as a bad idea, his heart drumming in his chest as he paces through his apartment.  

for one thing, the light is going to be bad if he doesn’t keep the curtains open.  but if he keeps the curtain open, rey might not be comfortable.  he’s on the second floor, and the people on the street below might not look up and into the apartment, but he is also right across the street from the architecture library and there might be budding architects staring blankly out the window as they procrastinate doing whatever architecture students do and get quite the eyeful.

he focuses on that, because focusing on the fact that rey is going to be naked in his apartment in fifteen minutes is more than he can really handle on.  better to focus on making sure that his pencils are sharpened, figuring out what the lighting is going to be like if it’s not natural, trying to think of what  _pose_  she’ll be in so that she doesn’t have to maintain eye contact with him if she doesn’t want to.

he gulps.

he likes drawing her eyes.  they’re so expressive.

but the whole point of this is that he’s supposed to be drawing the rest of her body.  all of it.  unclothed.

his phone buzzes and he glances at the lock screen.

_i’m just wandering around near your place because i got here early.  ready to go whenever you are._

he is by no means ready to go, but he has all his supplies ready so he texts her and says  _come on up_  and what feels like seconds later, she is knocking on his door.

“hi,” he says, letting her in.  

“hello.”  her voice is breathier than usual and he takes her parka from her and watches as she tugs her sweater over her head.  “so…what’s next.”

“do you want the curtains open?” he asks.  “i was gonna keep them closed because of the library, but the lighting will be better if–”

“that’s fine.  i don’t care.”

“cool,” he says.  “cool.  do you care how you sit?”

“not really,” rey says.  “i mean–just.  it’s your drawing.”

it is.  it is, and he wants it to be perfect.  it’s what’s made him a terrible artist in the past–wanting things to be perfect, not settling for the beauty that can sometimes make its way through mediocrity.  but every time he draws rey, he wants it to be perfect, and now he–

“i haven’t really decided on a pose,” he forces himself to say.  “i didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“oh,” rey says a little blankly.  she gives him a tight smile.  “well.  i’ll just…i’ll just pick something then?”

“yeah.  i’ll,” he points towards his bedroom.  “let me know when you’re ready?”  and he flees.

he turns up the heat in the apartment.  he’d been skimping on it a bit this winter to save on his gas bill, but rey’s from the southwest.  she gets cold easily.  she’d come to his place in a parka and a heavy sweater and now she’s going to be naked in his drafty living room while he draws her.  (are her nipples going to get stiff?  will she get goosebumps over her arms and legs?)

he goes back out when she calls to him.

the pose she’s picked surprises him.  she’s sitting on his sofa, under the window, and has got one knee tucked up against her chest, with the other leg tucked underneath it and her hand resting on the apex of her knee for support.  he can see a tuft of dark hair between her legs, but not–thankfully, he decides instantly–the slit that is buried between.  the breast not hidden by her knee is small, and rounded and her dusty nipple has stiffened against the cold.  

but more importantly than any of that, she’s facing him, just as she has for her portraits.  she’s watching him closely as he crosses the room and settles down in his seat by the table.

“is this ok?” she asks.  “i can–”

“yeah it’s fine.”  his voice feels like it has gone up four octaves.  he clears his throat. “are you cold?  i turned up the heat.”

“it’s fine,” she says, “i sort of figured i’d be cold.”

“if it gets bad, we can take a break,” ben says.

she shrugs.  and he nods. 

his hands are shaking as he grabs one of his pencils.  then, steeling himself, he looks back at her.

she’s watching him, her face unreadable and he wills himself to be calm as he lets his eyes drop along the curve of her throat, the gap above her collarbone, down to the exposed breast next to her knee and–

“you have a six-pack?”  oh fuck, he had  _promised_  himself he wasn’t going to make any creepy comments about her body.  and goddamn those abs, crunched just a little bit as she curls around her knee.

she grins.  “yeah.”  she sounds proud of herself, and he can feel himself deflating with relief.  “had to do heavy lifting at my old job and found i missed it weirdly when i quit.  so i go to the gym a fair amount.  helps me calm down when i’m stressed.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.  especially since i don’t have to pay for a gym membership.”  she grins, then freezes.  “i shouldn’t grin, right?”

“i can save your face for the end,” he says as he jerks his eyes away from her abs to her face.  “trying to figure out where to start.”  he falls silent and his eyes trace along her legs.  she hasn’t shaved them, and now that he looks, her underarms aren’t shaved either.  it’s compelling in an unexpected way.  it somehow doesn’t surprise him that she doesn’t shave.

“start with my knees,” rey tells him.  “you look indecisive.”

he laughs a little breathily, and decides he will, once he’s done proportions.

she’s very well proportioned, he thinks.  not that he’s seeing her stretched out.  if anything the pose is intimate, as though they’re just hanging out on his couch.  it feels a little bit that way as he asks her more about why she likes going to the gym (she remembers to breathe when she has to breathe properly to lift the weights, and sometimes she gets a little anxious and forgets to breathe), what her old job that had made her lift so much had been (mechanic.  how she got into becoming a mechanical engineering major, actually.  putting cars together and taking them apart is fun), whether she misses the job itself given the components of it that she has taken with her (not really.  her boss was a swine.  and there aren’t good garages that’d take her part time near campus so she can’t look for something to weave into her coursework like working in the coffee shop).  her torso is long, her legs are neither long nor short, and there’s a definition to her arms that he’d never noticed, never would have thought to look for until he’d seen that six pack.

“do you work out?” she asks him when he does, eventually, decide it’s time to start with her knees.

“yeah,” he replies.  “i beat up a punching bag a couple of times a week.”

“doesn’t that hurt your hands?” she sounds concerned.  his heart lurches a little bit as he shades the crevice between her calf and hamstring.  

“i’m careful about taping them,” he says.  “it’s good to get the steam out.  that’s more important.  i wouldn’t be able to draw anyway if the steam stayed in.”

“what sort of steam?”

“i have anger issues,” ben says.  it’s hard to remember what anger even feels like as he fleshes out her calf, but it’s there, somewhere.  “lots of…stuff from my childhood.  if it stays inside me, it eats me.  so i try to beat it out.”

“is it weird that i can’t imagine you angry?” rey asks.  “you’ve always been shy ben.  i can’t imagine you wailing on a punching bag.”

“that’s good,” ben says.  “i don’t want you to know me like that.”

she doesn’t respond to that, and he glances away from her legs.  her eyes gleam thoughtfully back at him and he swallows and returns to her legs.

“how do you want me to know you?” she asks at last, and now he’s glad he’s staring at her legs again.  or he would be–if he hadn’t finished both of them and need to move on to her torso and that peeking dark thatch of hair at the base of it.

“i don’t know,” ben replies.  “i’m scared.”

“of me?”

“yes,” he replies.  

“is that why you’re shy?”

“i suppose.”

she pauses for a moment, then says, “that’s stupid.  i’m not someone to be scared of.”

god it is so weird to be having this conversation as he’s drawing her pubic hair.  but he forces himself to say, “you are.  more than anyone i’ve ever met.”

“what’s that supposed to mean.”

“that you take me as i am.  and care about what i want to be.  no one does that.  no one.”  his voice cracks embarrasingly and he decides that her pubic hair doesn’t need as much detail as her abs and moves to those instead.

she is silent for a good twenty minutes, and ben’s glad he’s drawing.  if he’s drawing, he can shut out the words in his head that sound like everyone he’s ever disappointed, telling him he’s fucked up.

“i like you as you are,” she says, her voice oddly thick, at last and he freezes.  “you take me as i am.  and draw me as you see me.  no one does that for me either.”

he chances a look at her face.  her eyes aren’t gleaming now.  they’re bright.  bright like she’s trying not to cry.

“you don’t have friends?” he asks her.

“i do,” she replies quickly.  “i love them, too.  but they all have this…i don’t know.  this image of what i’m supposed to be.  and i feel as though i have to be that person for them.  and i think there’s a part of me that is her, or else they wouldn’t see me that way.  but i’m not her all the time.  i can’t be.”  she swallows and she’s shaking and ben puts his pencil down.  

“hey,” he says.  “deep breaths.”

“sorry,” she mumbles.  “this is embarrasing.”

“moreso than being naked on my couch?”

“yes.”  she says it like it’s the most obvious answer in the world.  “that’s just my body.  like i said.  you see me as i am.”

ben says the only words he can think of.  “you’re not alone.”

“neither are you.”

tears sting at the corners of his eyes and a lump lodges itself in his throat.  he stares at her for a moment.  

her cheeks are a bit flushed, and a tear has dripped down from her cheek and ben wants to get up and wrap his arms around her, to hold her close to his heart.  

but instead, he turns back to his paper, to the drawing he’s working on, to the same problem he has always had where if he tries to draw her, he wants it to be perfect, but no drawing that he ever makes will be as perfect as her sitting there.

and something completely unexpected happens as he starts to draw again.

he finds that he is not afraid anymore.

* * *

“ok,” he says. the picture isn’t perfect.  it never will be.  but the light has changed enough, and he can tell that rey is getting stiff, and he’s getting a little tired.

she gets up from the couch and without showing a hint of embarrasment, comes over to the table and looks down at the picture.

ben’s proud of himself: he’d kept it together about how beautiful her body is for the most part while drawing her.  but now she’s standing right next to him and her abs are at eye-level, framed by her perfect breasts and the hair above her sex and yeah–his brain shorts out a little bit.

she doesn’t say a word as she looks at the drawing, and he can’t help himself.  “you like it?”

“yeah,” she says and her voice is breathy again.  “yeah it’s gorgeous.”

and suddenly she’s gone, hurrying across the room and putting her pants and shirt on again.

“rey?” he asks, bewildered.  she is breathing hard, and it sounds almost like she’s trying not to cry and he gets to his feet and moves towards her.  “rey what’s–”

“it’s really, really beautiful, ben,” she says, her voice thick.  she’s not looking at him.  she grabs her sweater and tugs it over her head, then picks up her parka and puts it back on.  

“what’s wrong?” his voice has gone up four octaves again, and his heart is drumming again, panicking again.  “rey, what did i–”

but she doesn’t let him finish because she’s grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled his lips down to hers.  they taste salty, from her tears, and before he even has time to process that he’s kissing her, that they’re kissing, that he could pull her into his arms and kiss her for a long time, she’s let go of him and has run out of the door of his apartment, leaving him  _horrifically_  confused in her wake.

he goes back to the painting and stares at it.  

everything about it is better than whatever he’s drawn in class so far this semester.  the lines are softer, more confident.  it is a good picture.  he had done her justice, he thinks.

no.  not justice.  homage.

he brushes his fingers over his lips right as his phone buzzes.  

 _you didn’t do anything wrong,_ rey texts.   _but it’s terrifying to see how much you care about me._

_no one’s ever cared about me that much before.  not even close._

_i shouldn’t have left like that.  i’m sorry._

ben begins typing.   _come back,_ but before he hits send, rey’s sent,

_i’m heading home but i’d like to see you again soon_

_i’d like that_ he replies before she can send whatever she’s typing next.   _do you want the picture?_

_no.  you keep it.  i want you to always see me like that._

she’d said something similar when she’d first sat for him.  he takes a deep shuddering breath.  his heart is so loud in his ears right now.

and it gets a little bit louder when rey sends her next text.


	34. undisclosed desires

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: vampire/vampire hunter
> 
> prompted by [@ahthoudost](https://ahthoudost.tumblr.com/)

> __ [I want to reconcile the violence in your heart  
>  I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask  
>  I want to exorcise the demons from your past  
>  I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DR8OOWcsFj0U&t=YmY0YjA4MGUzYzAxZWIyZmRmNmZmMDZlYWI4NTZjNmIzZmM2NzVkMixtbkRZUzZYUA%3D%3D&b=t%3AuOrapqyk6pSys1VgIq3etA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fcrossingwinter.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F170392358280%2Fif-you-are-still-talking-prompts-undisclosed&m=1)

there’s no coming back from the night.  

if there were, you wouldn’t  _need_  vampire hunters to begin with.  stakes through the heart would not be required to protect from those who have been damned.  collars would need not be worn so high and wrists would need not be covered quite so tightly.

there is no coming back from the night, and so people rarely go out into it.  but rey has always been impulsive when the right thing to do is buried beneath fear and “should nots,” so she wraps a coil of rope and wears it across her chest and back in a diagonal; she places a stake at her hip because just because this is the right thing to do, and just because she’s impulsive doesn’t mean that she’s stupid; and she buttons up the coat that leia organa had fitted her with so that its scratchy collar sits just under her chin and she steps out into the dark.

* * *

“did my uncle send you?” he asks.  the wind is tugging at her coat and in the darkness she cannot see his eyes–just the darkness of his lips against the pallor of his skin.  

“no,” she replies.  “i didn’t come to destroy you.”

“so the rope is for more personal acts?”

“i didn’t come to destroy you–but if you try to destroy me, i will defend myself.”  she rests her hand on the stake in her belt.  “i don’t come to you defenseless.  not when you are a knife at my throat.”

his lips quirk in a smile and she catches a glint of his teeth.  he takes a step towards her.  “i’m not a knife at your throat,” he tells her quietly, and something in his tone makes all the heat within her pool in her stomach.  “i’m not a weapon.  not to you.”  he takes another step towards her and reaches out a hand.  “why are you here?” the sardonic tone to his voice is gone, his question serious now.

“because you don’t deserve to die,” she says.  

“don’t i?  i have killed.  does that not deserve retribution?”

“you’re more than what they made you,” she responds.

“am i? and how would you know that?”

he is so close and she can hear him breathing.  his lips are so dark in the night, and her hand tightens on the rope over her chest.  “i know you,” she whispers.  “i know you are more than your fangs–that you can be so much more if you let yourself.”

“and will you let yourself?” he asks, and his hand is at the top fasten of her collar.  “or must i be the only one to bend?”

rey swallows, and how aware she is of her beating heart, knowing how aware of it he must be as well.  all that blood, flowing through her veins, life in liquid form.  

she feels no heat radiating from his dead finger just beneath her chin.  he has stopped breathing so intensely does he stare at her.  and that pool of heat in her stomach is only growing hotter the longer she stares into his black eyes.

_i want to bend._

he sees that in her, and the button at her throat pops loose.


	35. i'm sorry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: post-canon
> 
> prompted by [@for-the-town](https://for-the-town.tumblr.com/)

> [I’m Sorry - John Paesano](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DV25LJqJTBow&t=NmI1ZjFmOTQwMDBlZTJlNTY1MTRkZWE4ZTkxYTg5MjZlNzE4YWE3ZixzNkNicVdlZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AuOrapqyk6pSys1VgIq3etA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fcrossingwinter.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F170398749751%2Fif-youre-not-feelin-the-military-au-thats&m=1)

“ready?” she asks him.  he takes a deep breath and looks up the ramp.  

it’s still a piece of junk.  of that he’s sure.  probably  _more_  of a piece of junk than when he’d been  _kid_  in the second row of the cockpit because whoever had jacked the thing from han solo hadn’t treated it like his firstborn son.  better than his firstborn son.  better than his only son.  

_hey.  it’s you and me, kid.  whole damn galaxy against us but we’ll make it through ok._

he swallows.  rey’s a few paces ahead of him, halfway up the ramp.  she’s watching him with sharp eyes, her face…she has such a beautiful face when she holds it like that, like she’s transfixed in the moment and there’s a lightness even to the nervous curiosity in her gaze.

he can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like they cared.  he can only remember rey.

he squares his shoulders and climbs the ramp towards her, taking her extended hand and lacing his fingers through it.  together they find the cockpit and he swallows as he sits down in the chair that his father had once occupied.

_one day she’ll be yours, kid, so treat her gentle._

he wonders where his father’s gold dice actually are, that mindtrick that luke had played on him on crait–break him to remake him.  it had worked twice, and ben would never not hate him for it, even if it means that he’s sitting here with rey now and she’s helping prepare the falcon for takeoff.

“where do you want to go?” he asks her, and she gives him a nervous half-smile.  

“i want to go everywhere.”

“that’ll take a while.”

“we’ve got the time.”

“true,” he says.  he looks at her.  he’s never seen her look excited like that, like a child who is about to be given the world on a platter, like all her dreams are–at last–about to come true and she doesn’t have to wait for anything anymore.  “where do you want to start?”


	36. i do now though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: t
> 
> tags: post-sexual content
> 
> anonymous prompt

she’s got her head tucked under his chin, and his arms are still wrapped around her and he wants never to move ever because this–this right here–this he’s good at.  this is what he was born for.  this, more than the force, more than his powerful bloodline and his name–loving rey, and holding her as she comes down–this is what he was born for.

he can feel her heart still beating hard in her chest as she comes down, can feel the way she’s still clenching lightly at him, because somehow she’s still going even as he’s starting to go slack inside her.  her lips are open, and maybe she could be kissing his chest, the side of his peck, but she’s still trying to get hold of herself, still coming back down from it all.

he trails fingers down her spine, relishing the warmth of her skin, the way she nuzzles her face into his chest at the feel of it and her fingers tighten slightly against the muscles of his torso.  now her lips are kissing him.  now he feels her smiling as she looks up at him through heavily lidded eyes, sated and lazy and warm.

 _do you ever just feel…still?_ she asks him without asking.

 _i haven’t._ he could send her images of failed attempts to meditate, of never feeling alone in his mind.  he is glad she will never know the cold feeling of snoke’s fingers in her thoughts.  _i do now though._

and it’s true.  he has never known a quiet in his heart quite like this tranquility.  there’s no anxious chattering of thoughts, no simmering pain and anger.  there’s just rey, and ben, and the way she fits on him even though he’s not hard anymore, and the way their breath and their thoughts mingle together, the way their hearts beat as one.


	37. I can have control for you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: e
> 
> tags: sexual content, anal sex, pegging
> 
> prompted by [@michiopa](http://michiopa.tumblr.com/)

The world goes blissfully still as she presses into him.

His mind has always been too loud.  All his life, being pulled this way and that–be this, do this, what great power you hold, heir to everything and heir to nothing.  How many directions has the galaxy pulled him in?  His mother’s will, his father’s, his uncle’s, Snoke’s.

And now nothing.

Nothing but him.  No swirling who are you who can you be to me who will you be who should you be the should that hurt most of all.  

Just him.   

Just him, and Rey, holding onto his knees for balance.  Her face is flushed as she presses the phallus that’s strapped to her hips into him.

“Too much?” she asks him.  

He’ll never have enough of her.  This is a truth he has known down in his core for a very long while.  But how brightly it shines when the rest of everything falls away.

His hand flutters on the bed next to him, and he realizes his fingers are trying to grasp her.  But she is far away like this, not pinned beneath him or straddling his hips.  She is out of his grasp.  She is closer than she has ever been.

“Rey,” he garbles out and he rocks his hips against the toy.  It pushes into him and he whimpers and behind closed eyelids he sees stars.

“Stay still,” she tells him, and her voice somehow manages to be both stern and gentle.  How has no one in his life ever managed this until Rey?  Stern and gentle and loving.  He’ll give himself to her gladly.  He trusts her with him completely.  “Stay still.  Let me have control.”

Control.

 _You need control, Ben,_ his uncle had always told him whenever his power had burst forth.  

 _Skywalker tried to control you,_ Snoke had told him.   _But you cannot be controlled.  Your power must always be untamed._

He looks into Rey’s hazel eyes, loses himself to how full he feels with her guiding a smooth stiffness in and out him, the way her hands resting on his knees feel steadying.

_I can have control for you._

And he loses gives himself to her, loses himself to the feeling of her filling him and voiding him, in and out she pushes and pulls.  She is panting there, and her grip is firm and his cock is throbbing hard and forgotten against his stomach because to Rey, right now, there is only his ass and for Rey, right now, he controls every impulse to rut against her, to stroke himself into oblivion, because she had said, simply, somehow without demand, “ _Let me have control.”_

He gasps when she shifts and finds a new angle that causes every muscle in him to try to convulse.  They don’t, though.  He controls them, and his stomach is lurching, his insides are writhing as she strikes that part again and again, but he does not move.  He only gasps, groans in time with the phallus’ movement.

She leans forward, a hand leaving his knee to rest on his chest just over his heart and his skin is aflame with it.  He opens his eyes and Rey’s whole body is flushed from the movements of her hips.  Her stomach is flexed and he can count the six bulging muscles there, the ones he has licked his way along on other nights, her small breasts bobbing along in time with her thrusts just above her sturdy abdomen.

She’s watching him, watching his face and she gives him a smile.  “How is it?” she asks, and there’s bemusement laced into the words, a crooked smile because she knows.

Except she doesn’t know.  She can’t know.  She can only guess.  But she needs to know.

He finds the Force and what fine control it must be to open their bond just enough for her to feel everything he’s feeling but not so much as to flood her.  She gasps and stills for a moment and he recognizes the glaze in her gaze and knows that he just made her come.  She hadn’t expected it, had expected him to try and tell her, or to be wholly unable to.  And for a moment, she had lost control.

But it is only a moment.  She shields herself from the onslaught of his senses.  “Are you losing control, Ben?  Am I making you lose control?”  She punctuates each word with a jut of her hips and he groans.  “You’ve been so good, Ben.”  

The other hand leaves his knee and comes at last to his cock and he chokes out a strangled cry because it’s more than he can handle, the phallus inside him, Rey’s hands on his heart and on his dick and his mind–galaxies away as his body convulses and he shoots hot streams of cum up his chest.  

Slowly, Rey extracts the toy from him.  He feels the bed shifting as she fiddles with the straps around her hips and a moment later, she is crawling up his chest, her lips at his neck, her breasts smearing against his emission.  He feels her heart fluttering against him and finally he moves his arms to wrap her in them.  

He can lie like this forever, his mind empty, his body spent, and Rey at the heart of it all.


	38. platonic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: m  
> tags: modern au, roommates au
> 
> prompted by [@thereminnsonata](http://thereminnsonata.tumblr.com).

_it’s just platonic_ , rey tells herself when she starts noticing the heat of him.  their kitchen is tiny and ben is huge and in the mornings when they’re both rushing to get out the door for work, she notices how warm he is, how he’s practically a furnace even though he just took a shower and smells like whatever scent they market as being “masculine” in men’s body wash.

 _it’s just platonic_ , she tells herself when she’s curled up next to him watching television.  they can’t agree on the types of shows to watch: ben likes political thrillers, rey likes shows with lots of actions so they end up mostly watching scifi movies because that’s as close as they can get to a truce.  if she’s tired, she rests her head on his lap and he runs his hand unconsciously over her hair.

 _it’s just platonic_ , she tells herself when she’s drunk and kisses him.  she’s drunkenly and platonically kissed rose plenty of times, and she and ben are friends–more than friends.  he’s her  _best_  friend.  why can’t she kiss her best friend if she wants?

 _it’s just platonic_ , she tells herself when he has her pressed against a wall and she’s sighing into his mouth.   _it’s just platonic_ , as she wraps her legs around his hips and feels the way he burns right into her groin with all his furnace body heat and how that bodywash scent of him takes over her nose as she buries her face in his neck.   _it’s just platonic,_ as their clothes fall to the ground,  _it’s just platonic,_ as his lips find her cunt,  _it’s just platonic._

“i love you,” he whispers to her when they’re tangled on the floor beneath the couch, naked and sweating and hearts racing.  and with a surge to her gut, rey repeats the words back to him–and it’s not platonic.


	39. "I'm pretending to be your bff because you looked VERY uncomfortable with that person at the bar hitting on you" AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> prompted by anonymous

“Ben!  We’ve been looking for you.  Excuse me,” the stranger says, cutting between him and the woman with the  _extremely_  low-cut shirt and the leering expression as she looks him up and down.

Three things happen in Ben’s mind all at once.

The first is that the woman who is cutting between him and the stranger is one he has never met before in his life.

The second is that she has very nice eyes and when she grabs his arm, he feels his heart jolt in his chest.

The third is that she called him Ben.

He finds himself being steered away from the bar, the stranger prattling his ear off about how Finn is throwing darts with Poe and they both say they can beat him but she  _knows_  that they can’t and she’s putting money on him so he had better win and–

When they are out of earshot, she pauses and says, “Hey.  You looked uncomfortable and in need of rescuing.”

“Rescuing?”

“Yeah.  Rescuing.  Sometimes, you see someone in need in a bar and you rescue them.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, Rose and I cover each other all the time.  Has no one ever rescued you?”

Ben blinks at her.  “No,” he says slowly.  “I can’t say they have.”

“Well, you’re welcome.  Unless I was interrupting, but I don’t think you’d have come with me if I had been.”

Belatedly, he says, “Thanks,” and she grins.

“You’re welcome to try and best Finn with darts if you like.  I wasn’t lying about how that’s what he and Poe are up to right now.  Unless you’ve got other friends you’d like to–”

“How’d you know my name?” he cuts her off.  “Ben.”

She blinks at him, and cocks her head slightly and the playfulness in her expression fades.  “I don’t know,” she whispers.  “I just did.  You seemed like a Ben.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> prompted by [@lonelyspacebabies](https://lonelyspacebabies.tumblr.com/)

he gets on the bus two stops after her every morning and she doesn’t think he does it on purpose, she thinks it’s likely just habit, but he always stands next to her, one hand on the railing, the other holding a paperback that he thumbs his way through as the bus jolts its way south towards downtown.

she notices him because he’s possibly the tallest man she’s ever seen–so tall that she has to crane her neck to look up at him, and rey is above the average height for women.  he’s broad shouldered, and he always wears dark colors, even in summer, and she suspects he’s a lawyer or a business man because he’s always wearing sharp cut suits.

he always stands, even when there are seats available.  he always has a book, and once she saw him finish his book, put it in his bag, and take out another book.  they’re usually pulp fiction scifis, which amuses her because they are so at odds with his fancy clothes.

more than once, he catches her watching him.  the first time, it is clear that he does not care because he sort of rolls his eyes and turns back to his book.  by the fourth time, there’s some curiosity to his dark eyes, and by the eighth time, he puts his book away and says, quietly, “hi,” and his voice is a low rumble in his chest and she hears remarkable nervousness there.  his nervousness is comforting when, her throat dry, she replies, “hey.”


	41. "stuck-in-an-airport-because-the-flights-were-SO-VERY-delayed-and-it’s-like-two-am" AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> prompted by [@quiescentem-puella](http://quiescentem-puella.tumblr.com/) and [@rosered282](http://rosered282.tumblr.com)

it’s the one flight in the terminal that says  _delayed_  and not  _cancelled_ , and so rey is sitting there, her knees tucked up in her sweatshirt, staring out of the window at the snow.

she had been so excited to see snow.  she’d never seen snow growing up, and so seeing white fluff fall from the sky makes her smile with pure delight.  

or it had been, until she’d arrived at the airport six hours before and she’d come across long lines of people getting their flights rebooked and trying to get the hotels to pay for hotel accommodations.  she’d expected a long line with a beleagured attendant, but no–no there had been no one at the desk for her flight and it had been delayed and not cancelled.

as hour six turns into hour seven, rey mutters, “are they sure it’s not cancelled and they just haven’t forgotten about us?” without actually expecting an answer from any of the other silent waiters.

“i haven’t had anything saying it’s cancelled, so it’s still on,” comes a low voice and rey jerks around to see a man sitting there in airline uniform.  his hair is dark, and waving, and he’s got a paper cup of coffee in his hand and he’s watching her with dark eyes.

“are you our pilot?” she asks.  she can never tell.  there are male stewards sometimes, despite what the stereotypes say.  

he nods.  

“and you’ll be able to get us out safely  _if_  we’re not cancelled?” she asks, looking out at the snowy tarmac.

he snorts.  “kid, i’ve got you covered.” 


	42. Chapter 42

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> prompted by [@briony-larkin](http://briony-larkin.tumblr.com/)

looking at them, you’d never know they hadn’t met before.  

that’s what long train rides do to people.

the conductor makes his way up the aisle to check tickets after every stop between new york and seattle.

at first, the two are arguing.  something inane, by the sounds of it.  that is why the conductor makes note of it.  faces blur together after a while, but hearing someone loudly call another passenger a “monster,” makes them stick out in the crowd, especially since he seems to take it in stride. 

later they’re talking quietly, heads bent together, eyes intent, and the only explanation is that the two know each other already.  how could they not? to have transitioned from monster to intimate-looking conversation so quickly.

when they are sleep, his legs are stretched diagonally across her legrest–his legs are so long that the diagonal seems to be the only way that they can really stretch out in full–and she’s curled up in a ball with her head on his chest.

during one of the long breaks–a few hours in chicago–they end up getting lunch together a few blocks from the train station.  during one of the shorter breaks in minnesota, she goes and stands on the platform with him and they share a cigarette.

so it surprises the conductor when they reach seattle and he overhears, “if you want it, i can give you my number.”

and then, a breathy, tentative, “yeah.  that’d be nice.”


	43. sleep

his best night’s sleep is also his worst night’s sleep.

best because for the first time–perhaps ever–there are no voices in his head.  there’s no gentle pressure on his frontal lobe of snoke’s touch, no caress that sends uncomfortable shivers across his spine that had made him wail when he’d been too young to understand what was happening to him.

worst because he is alone.  worst because he doesn’t want to be alone, he wants rey there with him but he lost her she is gone.


	44. law school au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: modern au
> 
> prompted by [@michiopa](http://michiopa.tumblr.com/)

rey blinks at her email.   _there will be a therapy dog in the library during finals._

“oh my god.”

part of her is disgusted with this show of absolute…opulence?  that they’d bring a dog to the law school library for the poor law school students to cry in while they study.  as if there wasn’t alcohol at  _every_  event that they went to–and not cheap shit either. 

on the other hand….she wants to cry into a dog while studying for finals.

rey waits three days before going in the hopes that everyone will have gotten their hugs in and she won’t have to wait too long for her dog time.  rose had come home with a smile bigger than rey had seen since she’d gotten praise on one of her crim papers in front of the whole of the 1l class.  “it’s the best dog,” rose tells her, flopping onto the couch.  “just.  the best dog.”

she gets to the library at eight in the morning, in the hopes that most of her peers will still be asleep and to her surprise she is not the first person to see the therapy dog–a big golden retriever with a lolling tongue and soft brown eyes.

ben solo–tall angry asshole ben solo–is sitting on the ground his chin resting over the dog’s shoulder as he pats it.  his eyes are closed and rey has never in her life seen him look this relieved.

it’s kind of devestating actually.


	45. Psuedo-adopting-the-runaway-I-just-met AU?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: g
> 
> tags: canon divergence
> 
> prompted by [@hannidaforge](https://hannidaforge.tumblr.com/)

he practically crash lands on jakku, his head still reeling his heart still throbbing and the voice in his head telling him  _no, no–come to_ me _not there.  that place will finish what skywalker started and suck you dry._ but ben needs to think  wants  _quiet_  and he’s never had quiet, maybe he is a mad monster after all, maybe he should have let his uncle kill him.

the desert is dry.  it is harsh and it is not long before his skin is burning and cracking and his breath hurts his throat.   _good_ , he thinks.   _i’ll look the part._  he is sitting in front of his space craft–not broken, he’s a good enough pilot to have prevented that even as he’d landed in reckless pain.  he’s not sure how long he wants to sit here.  he can’t bring himself to move, to find habitation.  he just wants to let the desert strip him to the bone.  he’s sure it’s more than capable of that.

he’d been born the day that jakku had been won and he can see remnants of the empire ( _just like me mother why didn’t you ever tell me_ ) across the horizon.  a star destroyer and at-ats and other smaller ships peppering the sands.   _she didn’t tell you because she feared you.  it was her weakness–fearing your strength.  she never knew how to love you and thus never could.  leave this desert planet. come to me and you will know–_

“who are you?”

ben nearly jumps out of his skin.  

there’s a girl standing in front of him and she’s thinner than anyone should be.  she has the destinct look of someone who doesn’t have enough to eat, but has also grown a lot very quickly.  he recognizes the latter part well.  that had been him once, though he’d never known the hunger he sees written on her face.

“i’m no one,” he tells her, and it’s almost a relief to say.  not skywalker, not solo, not organa.  not anyone.  just whatever he is now.  he gets to his feet and looms over the girl, but she doesn’t seem frightened when she replys with a snort,

“i got that.  no one on jakku is anyone.  what’s your name?”

“i’m…i’m ben.”  just ben.  he likes that–stripping himself of them, of all of them, the way that voice in his head keeps telling him to.  the voice in his head should be reveling.  why isn’t it there?  is it frightened of the girl who isn’t frightened of him?

“well, i’d keep a close eye on your ship or else it won’t make it through the day,” she says nodding.  “unless you don’t mind scrapping it for parts.  you’d make good money off it.”  her eyes are gleaming hungrily at his ship.  “you should also find something to cover your face.  or at least your hair.  the sun’s harder on dark hair.”  she pats the rags she has wrapped over her own head.  

“how’d you know i’m not from around here.”

she gives him an appraising look.  “too well fed,” she replies and ben feels pity for the girl.  she sees that in his face and rolls her eyes.  “don’t look at me that way.  you’re here now too.  if i were you i’d get away while i still could.”

“come with me, then?” ben offers, not really meaning it but also sort of meaning it.  there’s something about this girl, and the way she made the voice stop.  “we’ll go wherever we want.”

a shadow crosses her face.  “no, i can’t.  i’m waiting for my parents.”

“your parents?”  _see you around, kid,_ his father had said, ruffling his hair as he’d shipped him off to luke. and nothing– _nothing_ –from his mother when he’d learned that darth vader was his grandfather.  

“they left me here.  but they’ll be back.” a ghost of a smile crosses her face.  she looks up at the sky as though expecting to see their space ship.

“when’d they leave you?”

“when i was little,” she replies and there’s a stubborn jut to her jaw now.  knowing what little ben knows of jakku, he is not surprised that this hard planet would turn the girl stubborn.  how else would she survive?  “but they’ll be back.  i know it.”

“kid,” he tells her and his voice is hard and she bristles at the word his father had called him for so long.  “they aren’t coming back.”

“they  _are_ ,” she snaps, hands on her hips.  “they are–you can’t know that.”

ben’s lips twist and he looks out over the dunes.  “i can,” he says.  “parents let you down.  it’s what they do.”

“just because your parents let  _you_  down doesn’t mean mine–” she cuts herself off and stares, confused suddely, or perhaps mirroring ben’s confusion.  how had she known about his parents?

ben reaches out with the force and is nearly blinded by the brightness he sees there.   _a diamond in a sea of sand._

“you’re for more than this,” he tells her quietly.  “you’re for more than scrounging for food.  you’re strong with the force.”

whatever she had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that.  she blinks at him.  “the force?” she asks, almost wistful.  “that’s legends.”

“then you’re a legend,” he tells her.   _and i don’t want my uncle to have you._ “and your parents threw that away.  just like mine threw me away.  they aren’t coming back for you and i’m not going back to them.”

her eyes narrow.  “i’ve heard things about strange men who try to abduct girls.  i’m not stupid.”

“i didn’t for a second think you were,” ben says.  the voice is gone.  how  _light_  he feels.  is this what people feel all the time.  he feels giddy.  he feels desperate.  he doesn’t want her to go, but he won’t make her stay, won’t make her do something she doesn’t want to do, be someething she doesn’t want to be like they’d made him.  “and i’m not that type of guy.”

“i’ll beat you up if you are.”

that makes him laugh.  she’s almost a foot shorter than he is, but he doesn’t doubt, somehow, that she could.

“what do you want, rey?”

her eyes go wide as his do.   _how did you know my name?_ they seem to ask. and he feels her try to reach out with fumbling inaccuracy, a baby trying to crawl for the first time.

then, half heartbreak, half exhileration, “i want to see the stars.”


	46. fae au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: t
> 
> tags: fairy tale
> 
> prompted by [@always-a-marvel-fangirl](https://always-a-marvel-fangirl.tumblr.com/)

there is power in names.  

that is why you never tell another your true name.  

that is why rae, and nothing more.  no fae will know her truth.  no fae will control her.

* * *

twice a year on the equinox, you paint your lips blue and drink wine red like blood.  red and blue–the color of the heart and the color of the sky, mixing together in your soul when the sun and moon are balanced.  you are to drink and dance, and leap over a fire, and find a boy to kiss.

rae has never done this.  she doubts she ever will.  there are whispers that there is fae blood in her (“rae the fae, rae the fae,” the jeers have followed her since she was first left with unkar plutt), and that keeps the boys away.  none of them want a changeling child or a girl who can command them by knowing their name.

* * *

but rae’s blue lips find another pair of blue lips and she leaps over the fire hand in hand with a man as tall as a tree.  his eyes are black and there are whispers that his soul is owned by the fae and thus he should be avoided.  “he’ll bring you to them and slit your throat to keep himself alive,” rae hears whispered.   _rae the fae_ , she thinks.  

and perhaps it is her own loneliness that sends her too him, but she would be a liar if it was not also the curiosity to see if she could withstand him.

so when her blue lips find his blue lips and he presses her against a tree with his torso, his breath hot in her mouth and her heart thudding in her throat, rae cannot help but think that this–this is worth withstanding.

* * *

he tells her his name is kylo, but she knows that’s not the truth of it, no more than her name is rae.  she lies beneath the moon and trees, her head on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart.  “is it true?” she asks him, “that your soul is owned by them?  that you’ll take me to them and slit my throat?”

he does not reply.

“you’re a monster,” she tells him, not sure if she means it.

“yes, i am.”  

and he sounds as though he might cry at it.

* * *

he does take her to the fae, but that’s a story for another day.  a story of names and love and lies and truth, where first she calls him, “ben,” and first he calls her, “rey.”


	47. demon au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for [@lilithsaur](http://lilithsaur.tumblr.com)'s birthday
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: demon au

kylo hears an owl hooting and whirls about, eyes narrowed.  it is night, there is snow on the ground, and the world is silent when he walks through it.  that is his way.  if he cannot hear the creatures of heaven, they can’t see him.

but an owl is not a creature of heaven.

an owl is  _hers_.

his whole body is tense as he looks around, trying to catch a glimpse of her.  she is a creature of the night too, after all, and knows how to sneak through the shadows.  his nostrils flare and he tries to scent her as a hellhound.  

the owl hoots again and he nearly jumps out of his skin.  then he feels her arms around him like twin snakes as she presses her face into his back.  “jumpy?” she asks and her voice is a thousand bells.

if her grip around his chest were not so tight he’d have whirled around, he’d have loomed over her, spread dark wings with a snap as he bright sharp teeth to her throat.  instead he stands there, immobilized by her.  idly, he wonders if he could rip himself from her arms, if he could best her in combat, if he could win and claim her.

but what is the point, when she has already claimed him for the night?

she knows she has won when she feels him relax under her arms and he feels her teeth against his back.  she moves her way around him and he looks down at her–knowing what’s to come but curious about how.  

she is naked.  she is frequently naked, or nearly so, but in the moonlight reflected in the snow her usually tawny skin is nearly pale.  her nipples and lips are dark, and there are snow flurries caught in the curling hair above her pubis.  her wings are wide and silver and her eyes burn black back up at him, pupils so blown he can barely see the gold of her irises.  

“down,” she commands, and he kneels, his nose pressed against the muscles of her stomach.  he bites her and she lets out a hiss and grabs his chin, pulling him away from her.  “ _down_.”

so he lies back in the snow and rey stands over him, more beautiful than any angel ever could be.  once they had both been creatures of the light.  but she had been cast out and there had been no forgiveness for him behind heaven’s gates so here they are, not quite demons, not quite angels–something else entirely.

she arches an eyebrow at him.  “dressed for the weather?”  

he is.  a thick coat and heavy boots and trousers lined with wool.  and he knows what she is going to do before she does it.  one second she is standing tall above him, the next she is gone and he hears the ripping of wool and leather and then she is standing above him again and the cold rushes across his skin beneath the shreds of his clothing.  

he does not move.  he does not try to cover himself from the cold.  he only stares up at her and knows his eyes are as dark as hers.  

“you’re not ready for me,” she pouts, her eyes on his still stiffening member.  “i’m ready for you.  i found you.  but you are not ready for me.”

“you would want me to prepare myself?” he snorts.  “i thought you did not like it when others touched what was yours.”

and with a flash she is no longer standing over him.  her lips are inches from his, the tips of her nipples brush against his chest, and her grip is tight around his cock.  “i’m glad you remembered.”  hunger drips from her lips to his and his blood floods into his groin.  “mine.” and she bites his lip and pumps her hand lazily along him.  “you have always been mine.”

“always?” he manages to ask.  he has been in the dark longer than she.  he watched their rejection of her, watched as it hardened her soul, had cradled her distress in his heart until she could become all she is now.   _you have always been mine_ , he thinks as he looks up at her.  he wonders if she sees that in his eyes.

whether she does or doesn’t he can’t tell because with two more pumps to his member, she slides herself onto it and the heat of her is enough to make him forget the cold around him, the wetness of her enough to counteract the dryness of the wintery night.  she is sin and salvation was never for him.  blessings in a kingdom of heaven could never be appealing to him as worshipping this queen of damnation.  heat and possession and he has always been hers.  always, always.

he can see himself bulging through the skin of her abdomen as she sits up straight and throws her head back.  “mine,” she growls to the night.  “you are mine.”  

“i am,” he agrees, his voice low.  “always yours.”

she places a finger under his chin and draws him up so that his lips can latch onto her breast.  her fingers twine in his hair. and then, she begins to move and they roil together in the not-quite-dark not-quite-light of a bright snowy night.


	48. werewolf au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by anonymous
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: i guess i'd call it a modern au but in my head it takes place in the 1800s
> 
> shameless self plug for a [werewolf gifset](https://galacticprideandprejudice.tumblr.com/post/171026249242/i-could-howl-against-your-hair) i made a while back.

a full moon is a thing for lovers.

that is what rey has always heard.  a tall, strong, handsome man with warm eyes and a kind heart to wrap his arms around her and kiss her firmly, kiss her until she can’t remember how to breathe with the moon shining down on them.

but the full moon is not for lovers.  it is for monsters, and rey–rey is facing a monster now.

his fur is dark, his snout long, and his eyes are big and black.  hackles raised, he snarls at her and were rey not determined to be brave, she would have run off screaming.  but to run would have been pointless.  rey is fast, but the wolf is undoubtedly faster.   _that’s ben in there,_   _though_.   _that’s ben.  that’s han’s son._

 _don’t trouble yourself, kid.  he’s been long gone for years.  ever since snoke bit him,_ han had said sadly.

 _we told him he could stay–_ should _stay–but he wouldn’t listen he was so…_  leia had begun.

rey has never met ben before.  she has only seen an old daguerreotype of him as a little boy, framed in silver and placed in the center of the mantle above the hearth.  he had been young enough for his cheeks to still be plump, popping up above the white collar of his shirt, and his big, sad eyes–

“ben,” she whispers to the wolf, and the wolf cocks his head at her.  his snout is wrinkled mistrustfully.  “that’s your name.  ben.  do you remember?”

the wolf barks at her angrily and takes a step forward.  rey squares her shoulders.  if this is how she dies so be it.  

he sniffs at her neck, his teeth still bared.  “ben,” she says again.  “you don’t know me.  you wouldn’t.  i don’t know you either.”  she keeps talking and the more she does, the more the beast seems to calm before her.  “but i won’t hurt you.  i swear it.  and i don’t think you want to hurt me.”

dogs can smell the truth, she’s heard it said.  can wolves?

* * *

she wakes in the clearing to find him lying naked in the dirt next to her.  his skin is bare and scarred and hairless.  his breathing is ragged and there is a sheen of sweat that covers him.  rey shrugs out of her coat–a fine woolen one that leia had given to her and she uses it to cover ben as he sleeps.  or at least, she tries.  he is tall–taller by far than either of his parents.  she preserves his modesty, at least, even though the jacket will not reach all the way up his shoulders.  

he stirs, moaning and a bleary eye opens.

“it’s you,” he mumbles and his fingers twitch in the dirt as though trying to reach to her through his exhaustion.  

“shhh,” she tells him, reaching out her hand and resting it on one of his.  the other finds his hair and brushes it out of his face.  “rest, ben.”

his eyes flutter closed and he passes out again.


	49. "is that my shirt?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@rjrambles](http://rjrambles.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: m  
> tags: modern au

“is that my shirt?”

it’s the only thing ben can think to say because the rest of his mind has shut off completely at the sight of her, sprawled across the couch.  she’s not wearing pants and her legs–god he loves her legs.  loves the way they stretch on for days on end and how muscular they are in.  it can only be his shirt that she’s wearing–his torso is a lot longer than hers, and she’s swimming in the dark fabric as she’s lying there watching tv on his sofa.  

on his sofa…she hadn’t left.  rey had stayed there even though he’d had to go and take care of some errands.  she’s still here, and her legs are so beautiful and she’s staring at him and there’s a grin on her face because she knows the sight of her has broken his brain a bit.

“sorry–mine was a bit dirty,” she responds dryly and he rips his eyes away from his legs to lock onto hers.  “hope you don’t mind.”

“and what if i said i wanted it back?” he asks, the question coming out more breathless than he intends.  he wants it to sound suave, and seductive, and all the other words that apply to men who definitely aren’t him.  instead he sounds almost afraid.

rey shrugs, sits up, peels off the shirt and throws it at him.  “forgive me for imposing on presumed generosity,” she says, smirking and spreading her legs and ben stops breathing.


	50. "this was never right"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon divergence/post canon

ben is a very active reader.  

rey has noticed it whenever he’s reading through holos–the way he shifts around, the way his face reacts to what he’s reading, the way he’ll hum along in agreement, or huff in disagreement with whatever the text on the screen is saying.

so she really shouldn’t be surprised when, as he’s leafing his way through the ancient jedi texts that she’d stolen from ahch-to he actually mutters under his breath, “this is some fucking bantha shit,” as he angrily–albeit carefully–turns a page.

“they’re sacred–”

“sacred shit is what they are.” ben’s eyes flash as he looks up at her.  “this was never right.  none of it.  it’s pure arrogance.  like i’m not saying the sith had the right of it either, but the implication that ration can’t exist in the presence of emotions is  _fundamentally irrational._ on top of the sheer arrogance that…whoever wrote this thing had talking about the force.  that  _only_  the jedi should be connected to the force?  really?  how is  _that_  rational.  like i said.  pure arrogance.”

rey bites back a smile as he rants at her, but at the last of his words the smile fades and he catches that in her expression.  “what?”

she steels herself.

“luke said something similar.  when i saw him on ahch-to.  when he refused to teach me.”

ben’s hands tighten on the book and for a moment she’s afraid he’ll shatter the spine.  but he doesn’t.  his nostrils flare and he closes his eyes.  his mother always closes her eyes when she’s overwhelmed, but this is the first time that rey has ever seen ben do it.  he rolls his jaw slightly and takes a deep breath.  

“yeah,” he says at last, and there’s a finality to it that means that rey knows he doesn’t want to go further into the mention of his uncle, that he agrees with his uncle, than he already has.

she takes his hand.   _time_ , she thinks, and when she nudges her mind with his, she sees luke’s face, hears  _i failed you, ben_  for the first time.


	51. it's over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@reysajedi](http://reysajedi.tumblr.com) and [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com).
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon divergence

his heart is pounding.  it hasn’t beaten this hard since luke had stood over him with a lightsaber, since–with a flick of his fingers–he’d killed snoke.  

on a screen up ahead of him, he sees his own face projected with the big red letters  **WANTED**  and a ridiculously high number of credits stamped underneath it.   **ARMED AND DANGEROUS**  appear underneath his face, as do both the names  **KYLO REN** and  **BEN SOLO.**

so that’s it.  that’s it–and any chance he might have had of one day…well it doesn’t matter.  none of it’s ever mattered.  ben solo died a long time ago, and it was only a matter of time before kylo did too.  kylo was just as week as solo, it turns out.

he knows why hux is doing it, of course.  the revelation that vader had been leia organa’s father had crushed her politically  “what will the revelation that her son is kylo ren do to the resistance?” he mutters to himself.

to himself, and to rey, because he knows she’ll hear.

“we’ll manage,” rey hisses angrily in his ear.  “we’ll manage because we’re more than just leia organa.”

“well that’s good.  you’ll need that,” he says.  just like how he’ll need a ship.  something small and fast that can take him to the outer rim.  he can count on no hands the number of people who will help him, so it’s into hiding he has to go.  a fugitive.

like ben kenobi.

his hand tightens over his lightsaber.

“is that a threat?” rey asks angrily.  “are you about to reveal yourself?”

“reveal myself?” he laughs.  “you don’t know, do you.”  how is it that she is always the last to know–and yet the only one who truly understands.  she can see everything so clearly, her heart shining through the darkness to illuminate the darker, more ignorant corners of her mind.

“know what?”

he could tell her to turn on the holonet, to see his face splashed with a bounty on every channel.  he could tell her to figure it out on her own–that she doesn’t care, or shouldn’t.  but instead he looks at her because he needs to see her face when he tells her, when he tells her that his life is over and it’s time,  _again_ , to build a new one.  he wishes he weren’t so tired.  he wishes he didn’t know how hard the task will be.

“i got out of there,” he tells her at last.  “it’s over, rey.  it’s over.”


	52. "i can't do this"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@politicalmamaduck](http://politicalmamaduck.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant

it’s strange knowing someone so well that you don’t know them.  that’s the only thing that can explain it.  that she knows him so well that it blinded her to the rest of him.  she knows his heart, knows that deep down in some shadowy corner, compassion grows.  it is stunted, and starving, but it is there.  she has seen it.  

he has compassion for her.  

just as she has compassion for him.

she tries to squash it.  she can harden herself with ease, after all.  that is what she learned on jakku.  jakku is not a place where you learn kindness.  on jakku, it is kindness that grows despite the lack of water, and only with tender care.  jakku is dry, and harsh–and rey…rey knows how to be brutally dry, and harsh.

but it hurts.

she doesn’t want it to.

perhaps because he more than luke had nurtured her when the galaxy was so much bigger than she’d thought it was.  (you’re nothing, you’re no one, he’d told her and it had been defiance in her breast that had told her that wasn’t the truth of it.  how odd, that he’d shown her what she was by trying to tell her what she wasn’t.)  (but not to me, he’d added.)  (nor to me, she’d known.  that had been what had mattered.  perhaps if she hadn’t known that she would have gone with him.)  (she wonders if perhaps he had known what his words would do.  she wonders if that was how snoke got him in the first place.  she wonders many things.)  

(she wonders if she thinks about him too much.)

it is not her place to make his compassion grow, she decides.  she had spent too much time tending to her own compassion, knows the road of it, knows how hard it can hurt, knows how much easier it is to be hard.  this, she could teach him–this she could show him.  but it will hurt her too much to do it.  

how she wishes he would take that hard road on his own.  he had shown her compassion, after all.  can’t he show it to himself?

so she hardens herself–hardens herself until he softens himself, because she can’t do this anymore.


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@refined-by-fire](http://refined-by-fire.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: post-canon

rey keeps her eyes on the monitors.  she can’t understand most of what’s on them–doesn’t need to.  the only thing that matters is that one fluttering line that jerks its way up every second or so.  a pulse.  he’s still alive.

the breathing machine he’s on has minimized his wheezing, but she suspects it would continue to pump air into his chest even if his heart had stopped.  so she watches that little lifeline with more focus than she’s felt in anything.

_life.  death and decay.  that feeds new life._

_let the past die,_ he’d told her twice.

_let kylo ren decay,_ she silently begged ben.   _please, ben.  just stay with me._ let him be reborn from this.  let him find–

she felt it, a vague tickle across something that wasn’t her skin and her eyes shot to his right as they open.  big, and brown, and exhausted, and confused, and so very alive.

“ben,” she chokes out, relieved.

“so it was you,” she hears him mumble from under the oxygen mask.  she doesn’t know what that means, but she feels his contentment as his eyes flutter shut again, and his hand tightens in hers.


	54. are you always this quiet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@reylocalligraphy](http://reylocalligraphy.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant

_are you always this quiet?_ he wonders.  

child of the desert, child of no one–who would she have to talk to?  he can imagine her rattling about in that defunct at-at of hers, can imagine her creeping quietly across the desert.  loud means drawing attention to yourself and when you’re a little girl alone in the world–even if you can defend yourself–it’s best not to draw attention to yourself.

 _are you always this quiet?_ she wonders.

did your parents understand your nightmares?  did they believe them? when did you stop telling them?  when did you fear you were bothering them?  when did you start to think that nothing was changing and so why bother?  when did his voice become louder than your own, even when you did not speak?  does quiet mean you don’t have to hear anything except yourself in your own head?

_are you always this quiet?_

quiet doesn’t have to mean solitude.  quiet doesn’t have to mean loneliness.


	55. touch yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: canon compliant, masturbation, drunkenness

_touch yourself._

he almost chokes.  it’s the first time he’s heard her voice well over a month and he’s in the fresher right now.  he’s  _completely naked_ and rey’s in his head, telling him to touch himself.

or is he imagining it–imagining that she’s there, filling the void left behind after he’d killed snoke, after his uncle had died.  has he driven himself mad at last, as he’d been on the verge of doing since he was six years old?

_ben.  touch yourself._

it’s his name that makes him turn around.  he needs to know if she’s really there.  and he sees her, seated and swaying, her face bright red, her eyes shining and her lips chapped.  “are you drunk?” he asks her, disbelievingly, not even bothering to cover himself.  this was a thousand times worse than when she’d asked him why he’d hated his father while he’d just finished training.  his shirtlessness had taken her breath away, had locked her words in her throat and now, had made her blush and try to look away and demand that he cover himself.

her eyes drink him in, dripping down his chest to where the dark hair on his belly starts to grow and lower–lower still.

_touch yourself.  i won’t ask again._

“you are drunk, aren’t you?”

_what has that got to do with it._

“your judgement is off.”

_maybe.  but that’s for me to regret.  not you._

“and how do you know i won’t regret this?”

_because you’re already getting hard._

he can’t even deny it.  his traitor body, reacting to the fire in her eyes the way it always does. how many times has he come close to palming himself with thoughts of her in his mind?  how many times since she’d closed herself off from him has he dreamed of something like this, her reappearing just long enough to kiss him, to hold him, to tell him she missed him.

he supposed that her drunkenly telling him to touch himself was going to have to do.  

distantly, he remembers his father telling him that drunkenness is a window into the soul–that drunks are more honest than other people.  he hopes his father wasn’t lying to him as his hand grips his cock and it jerks happily in his hand.  the skin of his palm is rough and calloused and familiar, and he wishes that it were rey touching him.  but she’s staring at him as he sets a pace, and she definitely just licked her lips so that’s something.  

“get over here,” he breathes to her, trying to sound less like he’s begging.  she’s always managed to best him–every single time.  can’t she come to him for once?

but she shakes her head.   _no.  no i can’t.  not when i’m drunk._   _i want to mean it._

his heart lurches and his dick twitches and  _she wants to mean it_   _what does that even mean?_

“then touch yourself.” 

he sounds far more confident than he feels, and to his complete and utter shock rey hops up onto the counter by the sink and shimmies her pants down her legs and this isn’t real this isn’t happening.  except that it is.  it is and his heart has stopped, his hand has frozen, and his mind has gone wholly and completely blank at the sight of the soft brown down between her legs and the peek of pink that she’s toying with now.  

_you’ve stopped.  keep going._

so he does.  he keeps running his hand along the length of his cock, wishing it were hers, wishing it were her.  her touch would be softer than his own, and her lips would be right there, her eye would be right there burning light right into him.  Those little moans she’s making, little hums of pleasure–those would be vibrating through her skin to his and he wants her, he wants her so badly, wants her more than he’s wanted anything and he chokes out her name and his cum spatters across the floor between them.  

she’s gone.  the vision has ended and he hadn’t even gotten to see her come.  he can only hear the water still running behind him in the fresher and he knows that somewhere, lightyears away, she’s thinking about him as she touches herself.  

his hand balls into a fist.   _don’t stop,_ he thinks to her, wondering if she can hear the thought.  it’s not how it works, but part of him believes it could.   _don’t stop.  come back.  don’t leave me.  don’t forget me.  please._


	56. “You got this for me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [little-scribble](http://little-scribble.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

he stares at the band of dark chrome in the little black box.  his head is empty and all he can really think is that his heart is very loud in his ears, pounding like that.  of all the things she has ever done to surprise him–and oh, how she surprises him–this was the last thing he’d expected.

“you said no,” he manages.  “twice.”

“yeah, so i figured you weren’t gonna ask again.”  rey sounds nervous.  it’s her nervousness that sets his head back into motion as he rips his eyes from the ring to her.  “i figured i had to do it–that it was only gonna happen if i…if i made sure you knew i wanted…you.”

his throat constricts and his eyes are prickling and her eyes are bright with emotion as she looks at him, her jaw set–determined not to cry if he says no.

as if he could say no to her.  (you did, he berates himself.  there’s still time to save the fleet.)

“ _why_?” he asks her, still unable to believe this is happening.

“because i’m tired of waiting,” she whispers.  “and i thnk you need some incentive to finish figuring out whatever path you’re on.  so just know that there’s a path that joins with mine.  and i mean it.”

she turns away from him, leaving the little box and the ring in his hands.  he can tell from the stiffness in her shoulders that she’s refusing to look back.  and he knows one thing–he’s never going to watch her leave again.

he pulls the ring from the box and slides it on to his finger and hurries after her.

“rey,” he calls, and she pauses.  she doesn’t turn around though, and when he has reached her he slides the hand with the ring on it into hers, lacing his fingers through hers so that she can feel the chrome there.


	57. "we'll regret this" + "just for tonight"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [michiopa](http://michiopa.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant

“we’ll regret this,” he whispers.

“please.  just for tonight.”  her lips are trembling, her eyes are bright and kylo–ben–can he be kylo around her?  has he ever been kylo around her?–leans forward and pulls her head towards his shoulder to rest there, tucking her under his chin.  she shudders as she cries, she weeps and he hates the way that her body is wracking like this.  he likes her fierce, and proud, and strong.  he wants to break whatever hurts her.  (frequently, he wants to break himself.)

he wraps an arm around her.  she is not a small woman but she feels small because he is freakishly huge.  how he marvels at her strength.  (does it take a certain strength to break like this?  to know that they’ll regret this and not to care.  he doesn’t even have that.)

“i thought things would be…” her voice trails away.

“yeah,” he whispers.  “me too.”

“i didn’t want to fail you,” she whispers.   _i failed you ben, i’m sorry._

_i’m sure you are._ “you didn’t,” he replies glumly.  in another lifetime, he’d have been with her in the falcon as the first order had tried to blast it out of the sky.  “i fail myself constantly.  it’s the only thing i’m good at.”

“it’s not,” she says and her hand finds his and squeezes it.  “you’re good at this.”

“what is this?”

“comforting me.”   _hurting you.  you’ll hurt in the morning because i’ll be gone. that will make it hurt more.  you didn’t fail me.  i’m failing you._

_like i fail everyone._

he should let go of her hand.  he should break the connection, he should leave her here to cry on her own, to know what kind of heartless creature he really is.

but he fails her and doesn’t let her go until she’s stopped crying.


	58. “You make me feel safe” & “I will never forget you”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [oldmeerkat](https://oldmeerkat.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant

people talk about one shining moment.  something transient, but perfect.  rey had had more than one shining moment.  she’d had several shining hours–a future, solid and clear.  he’d been there with her.

he’d cried for her–for her loneliness, for her disillusionment.  there was light in him, compassion, kindness.  she had seen it–honesty in his heart and eyes.  empathy.  sympathy–more than ever she’d had from his legendary uncle.  

several shining hours–a future where ben solo shed the mask of kylo ren, shed his pain, became the man he was born to be.  she had leapt head first into the void for him, so confident had she been.   _you make me feel safe._ how was it that she’d felt safer in his eyes than ever she had in luke skywalker’s?  luke skywalker was a hero of the light, and kylo ren the blackest of devils, but it had been kylo ren who had reached for her hand when luke skywalker had batted it away.

chewie said nothing when she boarded the falcon again with a crushed heart and a broken lightsaber.  he didn’t say  _i told you so,_ though that would have been appropriate.  he did not try to comfort her either.  only ben had ever tried to comfort her.  even in his strange way, he had tried to comfort her about her parents.   _is that all he’s ever known?_ she wonders as she settles into her chair.   _did snoke tell him he meant nothing too?_

she does not turn to look at the broken  _supremacy_  as they fly down to rejoin the resistance.  she does not reach out with the force as she had done after she’d gone into the cave and it had spat her back out.  she knows he’s alive.  she knows he’s not decided, because he can’t be decided.  she has seen his future–he has seen her past.

_i will never forget you,_ she thinks savagely as she forces the tears back into her eyes.   _i will keep fighting for ben solo, even if you won’t._

how odd–her heart did not break for her.  

it broke for him.


	59. "let me see you"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@refined-by-fire](http://refined-by-fire.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

he has a new mask, twin to the one she’d seen first, the one from her visions before she’d even met him.  why, she does not know.  she knows he broke the last one, broke it and bruised his knuckles grinding it to a pulp.  she felt those bruises, though she did not know what they were at the time.

“rey,” he says, his voice mutated.  she cannot see his eyes, but she knows they are boring into her.

“you would hide your face from me?  i know your soul, ben.”

he does not respond.  the lightsaber is pointed at her but she finds she is not afraid of it.  she is not afraid of him.  she never has been.   _you–you’re afraid.  that you’ll never be as strong as darth vader._

she steps towards him.  “are you going to cut me down?” she asks.  

 _you’re afraid of me, afraid to lose me._ she knows this.  she has seen it in his eyes–twice now.  he will not be the one to strike her down.  he would have already if he could.  so long as this is the battle he chooses, she will always best him, for she is not afraid.

“don’t test me,” he says.  how strange–she thinks she can hear his voice quaver despite the way the mask modifies it.  she can see his expression–the same as the one from the elevator, terrified unable to give anything away, but terrified.  and yet determined, somehow, in his terror.

“you test yourself, ben.  you’re the only one left.  who do you want to be.  what do you want to be?”

she is so close now that she can feel the heat from his lightsaber.  the way he has leveled it, it is right at her throat.  but she remains unafraid.  he has not moved–not even to breathe since she spoke, and she whispers, knowing he’ll here her even at twice his arm’s length like this.  “let me see you.  whoever you choose to be, let me see  _you_.”

and she steps past the edge of his blade.  she walks closer and closer to him and she knows that he is standing there like a frightened porg, completely confouned by her lack of fear, by the faith she has in him. 

he doesn’t move when she reaches her hands up.  he doesn’t move when she disengages his helmet and pulls it from him, revealing the shock of dark hair and long sad face.  he doesn’t move when she drops the helmet to the ground and reaches up to run her hand along the scar on his cheek.

with a click, he disengages the lightsaber.  in a heartbeat, he sags against her.


	60. mirror image

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted, after a fashion, by [lilithsaur](http://lilithsaur.tumblr.com/post/172227182233/nsfw-reylo-fic-prompt-rey-and-kylo-are-making)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: sexual content, mirrors

she loves the way he looks when he’s inside her.  the anger, the fear, the roiling confusion that he’ll never quite be free of–they all slip away when he’s inside her, and she’s left with the deliriously happy eyes of a man in love.  

that they are this will never cease to astound her.  that they can break and remake one another with a kiss and a sigh and a few moments of skin slapping against skin will always make her feel like she’s flying–even when he has her on her back, even when she is thoroughly and completely grounded underneath him, her legs hooked around his waist, her hands tracing the scars on his chest and back.

cares slip away when they are together.  rey feels like she’s whole when ben is inside her–balancing out every piece of her she didn’t know she was missing until they’d collided for the first time.  words like “i love you,” become meaningless when they are together.  love is a simple word–too simple for what they mean to one another.

he sinks into her with abandon, and she watches as he loses all his pain in her.  how she loves his face when he is relaxed, when he is happy.  how lucky she is to know that he is capable of it.

his lips brush against her collarbone, against her neck, against her earlobe and–in a single swift movement, he’s twisted his hips and pulled them to a sitting position, her straddling him so that he can take her breast in his mouth.  rey rocks her hips into him happily.  she likes riding him, likes this angle and the way his cock strikes at her walls as she slides off and on him.  she sighs and lets her gaze wander through the room.

her eyes fall on the mirror and her stomach clenches.  it’s a long mirror, one that he uses far more than she does, and she’s never paid attention to it while they’ve had sex before.  but it is right in front of her now, and she can see her face, floating above his dark hair as he suckles at her breast.  her cheeks are flushed, her lips are red and swollen from his, and her eyes are glassy with delight.

ben stops kissing her and looks up and the moment he does, rey looks away from her own reflection.  her flushed cheeks get even hotter as ben looks up at her, confused.

“i saw myself in the mirror is all,” rey says.  his eyebrow twitches and a smile creeps across his face.  he reaches up to cup her cheek in his hand and the slowly creeping smile fades into a confused frown.  “i just–” but she can’t bring herself to say it–how disconcerting it had been to see herself like that, wanton and wanted.  

“you don’t like seeing what i see?” he asks her, his voice low.

“no, that’s not–”

“you don’t think you’re beautiful?”

“that’s not it either.”

“then what is it?”

rey bites her lip, thinking as ben strokes a hand up and down her back, waiting.  “it’s–it’s hard to see that as me.  me as me.  like that.  i know how i feel when we’re together.  but to see it.”

and ben pulls himself out of her and settles her on the bed next to him and for half a moment she thinks he’s going to take her in his arms, to try and comfort her as he so frequently does when she’s even mildly distressed.

but that is not what he does.  he gets on his knees and turns her about so she’s fully facing the mirror and he pushes his cock back inside her from behind.  “i love the way you look when i’m inside you,” he says and a shiver runs down her spine at the look in his eyes in the mirror.  “i need you to know.  i need you to see.”

he nudges his hips forward and rey sighs.  she likes this position, likes this angle too.  all angles are good with ben–maybe because he’s ben and she loves him–but some angles are better than others.  she sinks onto her forearms and locks eyes with him, waiting for him to begin again.  she pushes her hips back against his, trying to prompt him to move, but he shakes his head.  “don’t look at me.  you see me enough.  look at yourself.”

rey takes a deep breath and turns her gaze back to her own face.  she does not look half so contended now.  she looks nervous, uncomfortable, and as ben begins to thrust into her, one hand on the join of her hip and her thigh, the other on her lower back, she blurts out, “only if you look at yourself.”  he pauses.  “i want you to see what i see.”

she watches as his gaze leaves her face to stare at his own.  “done,” he whispers.

and there he is again, feeling so wonderful inside her.  her breasts swing back and forth from the movement of the two of them and she watches them do it, watches the way her stiff nipples brush against the blanket beneath her.  “do you see?” she hears him murmur.  “do you understand?”

and she tries to.  her eyelids are drifting lazily half-closed and her lips are parted slightly.  those red patches on her cheeks are so bright and with every thrust he makes, pushing deeper and deeper into her, she sees her lips twitch towards a smile so small that it can only be there because she is relaxing.

and she is.  the deeper he goes, the faster he goes, the more she hears the sounds of his thighs against hers, slapping sin into her ears, the more she hears the contented moans in the back of her throat start to bubble out of her throat.  her lips do that when she moans?  she would never have known.  this rey in the mirror is unlike any other rey she had thought herself to be.

 _and this is what ben sees every time_ , she thinks right as he strikes a spot in her that sends him growling, “fuck you feel good.”

and she does–she feels good.  she likes the way she feels, she likes the way she  _looks_  feeling what she feels.  she likes ben inside her, and ben’s hands guiding her movements and everything about her and ben feels perfectly right in that moment.

she comes with a cry and presses her face into the mattress as her orgasm rolls through her like the wave that had brought her down into the mirror cave, deep and strong and natural.  and when she looks at the mirror again, she sees ben lost inside her, his lips smiling against all odds and a moment later he’s gone from inside her and spurting hot cum across her back before collapsing on top of her, his heart racing against her ribs.

his lips brush against the back of her neck as he curls them onto their sides and rey peeks back at the mirror.  she likes the way she can see her brown hair poking out through the wave of his black hair, the way they seem to blend into one another as they let themselves fall into a blissful sleep.


	61. i lost the baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@semi-demi-minigirl](http://semi-demi-minigirl.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: miscarriage cw, canon compliant/divergent

it’s not ben she tells first.  she doesn’t know how to tell ben.  ben, who had blanched when she’d told him first that she was pregnant, whose heart had been full of “i was an accident too.  i don’t want it to be an accident.”  (even a happy accident, ben?)  ben, who had after that first reaction, quickly reconciled himself to it, had gotten excited, had started thinking of baby names–joking ones and sweet ones and meaningful ones–whose hands had always drifted to her still-flat belly, his force signature seeping through her skin to touch their child, that their child would know who their father was the moment they came into the world.

ben is away anyway.  he’s offworld, doing something for his mother.  that gives her time.  time to sit in the fresher and stare at the wall as blood seeps out of her and down the drain.  time to clutch her knees to her chest and let herself feel both hot and cold at the same time.  time to remind herself…remind herself…

_what if my mother had bled me out.  then she wouldn’t have had to abandon me.  did she want to abandon me?  was she conflicted?  did she wish i’d never been born?_

her head hurts, her heart hurts and the warm water turns cold and rey stands shakily, toweling herself dry and finding a pad to line her undergarments with.  she drifts out into the main bay of the base, thinking she should eat–she’s always hungry but she’s not hungry now.  she is aching all over, and her eyes hurt because she wept them dryer than the jakku desert.  she makes her way to the mess and fills a plate with food that she will only pick at and stares at it as her stomach writhes emptily.  

“rey?” the voice is quiet, and a moment later the bench next to her is shifting as leia organa climbs over it to sit down next to her.  “what is it?  what’s wrong?”

her hand comes to run up and down rey’s back and rey looks at her.  (“i was an accident too.” “what about breha–my mother’s mother, the one who raised her?”) 

“i lost the baby,” she whispers to ben’s mother.  she doesn’t know if he’d told her yet, he’d been planning to but the medic had said that the should wait.  (“it’s not uncommon for a woman to miscarry their first pregnancy,” he’d told rey.) 

(leia hadn’t.)  

(had her mother?)  

leia freezes.  she freezes and rey senses that ben hadn’t told her yet.  that she is gaining and losing a grandchild in one moment.  but leia organa has never been one to bow to grief.  she takes rey’s hand and tells her, “eat.”

so she tries to–one bite after another, one breath after another until the plate is empty.  then leia walks with her back to her room and wraps rey in a blanket and the two sit together quietly, staring out of the window until rey drifts off to sleep.

 


	62. it's ok i'm used to it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@upinbed](http://upinbed.tumblr.com)
> 
> tags: canon compliant  
> rating: g

_it’s ok, i’m used to it,_  he thinks when hux leaves him in the shattered throne room.  of course she left.  of course she thinks he is a monster.  he is a monster.  he killed his father.  he killed the one person who’d ever seen him for who he was.  he’d killed for himself.  he’d killed for her.  and it wasn’t enough, or perhaps it was too much.

 _it’s ok, i’m used to it,_  he thinks as his blood runs cold and he steps forward to press his blade through his uncle’s chest.  his uncle, who had always been four steps ahead of him, cleverer than any old man has a right to be.  his uncle has always been  _so very kind_   _i failed you ben i’m sorry i’m sure you are_  when will people know that what luke skywalker does he does for his own ego, out of love for no one but himself?  even now, even fighting him, ben was prepared to die but he’d never thought that his uncle  _you’re not doing this the effort would kill you_  is.  his blood runs so cold it’s hot as he screams his troops towards the base that he knows is empty because he can no longer sense his mother within it.

 _it’s ok, i’m used to it_ , he thinks when he sees eyes that once looked at him tenderly grow hard at the sight of him, when she cuts herself off from him as everyone else who’s ever tried to love him has.

* * *

_it’s ok, i’m used to it,_ she thinks when she stares at his form lying there on the floor.  she could drag him, take him hostage, take him prisoner, try to make him understand.  but he does not want to be salvaged.  she can try but she knows that her presence will make him bitter.   _they were filthy junk traders.  sold you off for drinking oney._ how long before her presence in his life will make him bitter and angry too?  does it already?

 _it’s ok, i’m used to it,_  she thinks as she finds her pod to take her back to the falcon  _property of han solo please return._ there’s no light left in him, she thinks to herself glumly.  just as there’d been no hope left in luke.  she’d thought that waiting was the answer for luke–that she’d wait until he understood.  that hadn’t worked.  nor had this.  but still her heart tells her to wait even as her mind tells her it’s no use.  it has done this before, after all.  it has waited for years, empty and unfulfilled.  but ben isn’t her parents.  ben had nurtured her.  her parents hadn’t even bothered.  can she wait for ben?  what’s the good in waiting if he doesn’t want to be salvaged?

 _it’s ok, i’m used to this,_ she tells herself when she sees his eyes.  they are sad, and she forces herself to be hard because she knows from jakku that if you are not hard, someone will subsume you, will steal what you’ve made your own and you’ll be left with nothing.  that’s what kylo ren will do to her if she’s not careful. and ben–he’d been strong enough to kill snoke.  maybe he can defeat kylo too.  but she can’t watch the sadness in his eyes die.  she can’t watch him be subsumed too.


	63. is that my shirt?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@jedi-summer-camp ](http://jedi-summer-camp.tumblr.com)
> 
> tags: modern au  
> rating: t

“is that my shirt?”

it takes him about ten minutes to ask–not because he’s afraid to, but because he’s genuinely not sure.  rey’s the type of person to go to thrift stores and find an over-large button-down that goes down to her knees and wear it as a dress, belted at the middle.  (that’s definitely one of his belts.  he remembers getting it from his mom for his birthday three years before.  it’s brown and he hates the way brown looks on him so he’s never worn it.  it looks good on rey though.  everything looks good on rey.)  (nothing also looks good on rey.)

she looks up from the floor.  she’s got a screwdriver next to her, as well as a bunch of shitty-looking “this is totally wood.  totally real wood.  not fake wood.  totally real” ikea pieces sitting on the ground next to her as she pours over the instruction guide.  (“i don’t want your help.  it’s calming to do on my own.  i like building things.”) (he remembers being far far  _far_  to drunk and singing “build me up buttercup” to her as they’d traipsed their way to the next bar since it was rose’s birthday and rose wasn’t done with them yet and rose might be half his size but he never wanted to cross her.)

“yeah,” she replies.  “you left it here.”

he blinks.  he can’t for the life of him remember that, unless he’d only worn his undershirt home or something.  which, he supposes is feasible.

“it looks good on you,” he decides.  because it does.  probably better than it looks on him.  

she smiles at him, her nose crinkling.  he loves it when her nose crinkles like that.  he loves that she’d invited him over to watch a movie but she’s still building cabinets.  he loves that she doesn’t keep good track of time, that she’s sitting there wearing his shirt and his belt and–he’s pretty sure–no bra underneath and is sitting there cross-legged with a screw driver and a swedish building manual and shitty cheap furniture that she’s proud of because she bought it herself.  how much does she grab from the world around her to make her own?  

he sinks down to the floor next to her and pulls her head towards his, her lips towards his and kisses her lightly, before pressing another kiss to her forehead. “you don’t know what you do to me,” he whispers before getting back up and sitting on her couch because his knees can’t really take kneeling on the floor like that.

“because i’m wearing your shirt?” she asks, and there’s a light teasing to her voice that doesn’t quite hide an undercurrent of desire.   _netflix and chill,_ she’d texted him, and he can never tell whether rey is oblivious or whether she knows exactly what she’s doing.  in this case, he settles on the latter.

“sure,” he says.   _all of it really,_ he thinks as, with a smirk, she reaches a hand up and undoes her top button.


	64. can i touch you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@refined-by-fire](http://refined-by-fire.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: m  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

“can i touch you?” 

as if she hadn’t been the one to hold out her hand to him, as if she hadn’t thrown herself into the abyss for him, as if she hadn’t grabbed his hip  _i’m here i’m behind you i’m with you_

but it’s different now.  different because he had not bent, perhaps–or she had not.  different because they’d each hoped that there wouldn’t be a light-years sized gulf between them and yet here they still are, hungry-eyed, tired, lonely.

“you want to?” he’d meant to sound cutting–or perhaps dry, or debonair.  but he just sounds morose, he just sounds wondering, as though his soul, connected to hers, speaks truths his heart cannot bear to face.

“i need to be sure,” she says and her voice is harder than it had been a moment before.

“of what?”

“that the future i saw with you–that there’s no hope for it.”

hope.  ben looks at her.  he’d hoped she’d join him, had hoped she’d understood–she who had seen his mind and heart more clearly than anyone ever had.  

he takes off his glove and extends his hand wearily towards hers, not letting himself hope that he’ll see something he can misinterpret next.

she flats her palm to his and–

_ben she sighs from underneath him, her lips hot against his collarbone as his mind whites out the only thing that exists in the galaxy is her is rey what is a throne what is power when she can undo him with a single_

touch.  

heat floods his cheeks, and she sees it flooding hers too.  she does not recoil, does not pull her hand away from his and the vision goes deeper.

_her hair is sweaty, her lips are swollen and red and when she opens her eyes she squeezes his hand and urges more from him more than he knows how to give but for her he’ll learn for her he’ll try for her he’ll do all he can because he can’t lose her not ever not again not when she’s so sweet and warm around him not when their hearts are beating in time with one another not when she’s panting his name just like that not when she is his past present and future and nothing has ever been so soft as his skin against hers as hers against his as the two of them balancing each other’s_

need.  

he needs that future–more than he needed the other one.  if that future is a lie he’ll rip himself to shreds and he can see in her own gaze that the same is true for her.  

“i won’t leave them,” she whispers to him.  “but i believe in what i just saw.  i don’t know how–but i know we’ll get there.”

and she’s gone.  gone, and not.  she’ll be back.  she always is.  and with her, the promise of–

love, perhaps.


	65. you can't save everyone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@thiscaringlark ](http://thiscaringlark.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

“rey.”

his heart is stuttering.  his lungs are trying.  there’s blood in them.  rey doesn’t know much about lungs–much about bodies beyond that they live–but she knows that heart should not pump blood into lungs.

“no,” she insists.  there are tears streaking down her face, mixing with sweat and adrenaline.  

“rey.  let go.”   _you’re still holding on.  LET GO!_   _(his hand still outstretched, begging her angrily.)  (rey holds on best, though.  it’s her strength.  she won’t let it abandon her now, not when there’s–)_

“no.”

“rey.”  every time he says her name she feels his heart spasm through the force.  he’s holding on for her, she knows that.  he’d be dead already if she weren’t there.  he doesn’t want to let go either.  “you can’t save everyone.”

“i  _will_  save you.”  she doesn’t know how.  she never had a teacher.  he’d told her she needed one, and he’d been right.  if he lives–when he lives–maybe he’ll

he coughs and rey takes his hand and closes her hand and focuses every piece of steel in her jakku-hardened soul on his chest.


	66. i'm gonna be a dad

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@nursemz87](http://nursemz87.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: modern au, reylo baby

it doesn’t really hit him until they’re driving to shabbas dinner at his mother’s place, a bottle of wine in the back seat that’s a little bit nicer than the usual wine that they bring.  (“now you bring the nice wine.  right when i can’t drink it anymore,” rey had said, scrunching her face in a smile as he’d stooped to kiss her.)  ben’s usually a speeder.  “speed limits are more like guidelines to solo men,” his father had told him when teaching him how to drive at fifteen.  (“if you are driving above the speed limit, you are breaking the law,” his mother had told him when she’d been the one in the passenger seat, hawk eyes on the road in case he drifted out of his lane.)  but today, he’s driving the suggested forty-five miles an hour right on the nose.  

“nervous?” rey asks him, reaching a hand over to rest it on his where it’s clutching the gear shift.

“no,” he lies.

“you’re driving slow.”

“i’m driving the speed limit.”

“you never drive the speed limit.”

“yeah, and you’ve never had a kid inside you so maybe i should be responsible and drive the speed limit.”  (his father had never driven the speed limit.  “easily ninety miles an hour on the highway to get your mom to the hospital when she went into labor with you,” he’d said, ruffling ben’s hair and ignoring his son’s protests that he was messing it up.)

rey snorts and he can tell she’s also rolling her eyes, but he doesn’t care.

this is real.  this is all very real.  you’re not really supposed to tell anyone before you hit the second trimester, but they’d agreed that they’d tell mom and amilyn.  (“i need a little light in my life after your father and luke died,” his mother had told him on their wedding day, giving each of them a big kiss on the cheek.)

_a little light in my life.  light of my life._

ben had been an accident–he knows that because of how soon after his parents’ wedding he’d been born, he knows because they’d decided one was enough (because ben was a handful) and there’d been no plans for other kids down the line at any point.  but he and rey had planned so carefully.  and they’d prepared themselves so well for heartache and failed attempts that they’d both been stunned when his sperm had done what they were supposed to do within the first two months of their trying.  (“when have i ever done something right?” he’d asked her as they’d stared at the test, both meaning it and not.  his hand rests on her belly.  that’s his kid in there.  that’s  _their_  kid, his and rey’s, rey’s and his.)

they arrive, and ben grabs the wine from the back seat.  his hand rests on rey’s lower back as they make their way into his mom’s new house.  they say kiddush and rey doesn’t drink from the wine glass that leia had poured her.  they wash hands and leia’s eagle-eyes (always eagle-eyed, even when he’s not driving.  “women always find out the truth,” his father had warned him once, but he’s never been sure if that’s all women or just his mom.  his mom always susses out the truth.  he can tell she’s wondering now.) are on rey.  they say motzi, and amilyn brings out some soup for them to start with and leia organa’s eyes are still on rey.

ben glances at her, and she gives him a small smile.  then he turns to his mother and says, his heart pounding in his ears, his head lighter than air, “yeah.  it’s what you think.  i’m gonna be a dad.”


	67. “We’re not just friends and you fucking know it.” + “Can you guys just fuck already?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@bernardi46-blog](http://bernardi46-blog.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent, dry humping

“can you guys just fuck already?  pretty please?  it’s killing me, here.”  rey’s eyes go wide and her back stiffens and her throat goes very, very dry.

it’s ben who responds into the comm, “is that an order, commander?” he quips dryly.

a pause, then, “i was transmitting, wasn’t i?” poe asks.

“you sure were,” jessika says almost immediately, and there are some chuckles over the frequency and ben switchess the comm off completely.  his back is stiff, his ears are a bit red and he’s refusing to look at rey even though she’s sitting right next to him in the falcon.

rey doesn’t know what to say.  her stomach is curling with an emotion she can’t quite identify.  she doesn’t think it’s humiliation–not like when she charged into the lanai village during their festivities–though there’s an undercurrent that’s similar to that.  she wishes ben would at least look at her.  that’s the part she doesn’t like.  that he’s not looking at her at all.

“ignore it,” she mutters at last because she can’t bear the silence.  she wishes he’d just left the commlink on.  it would be easier to listen to the others laughing at their expense than silence from him.

“i can’t,” he bites out and finally he looks at her and his eyes are blazing.  

“people say stuff all the time.  it’s just words.”

ben laughs humorlessly.  “you think that’s it? that i give a shit what dameron thinks about us?”  rey frowns and ben continues.  “i can be patient, rey, but don’t do that thing where you lie to yourself.”

“i’m not lying to myself,” she responds heatedly.  who is  _he_  to talk to her about lying to herself, thinking that the past could be killed, that he could let go of ben solo.  

“we’re not just friends and you fucking know it.”

her stomach bottoms out for just a moment before annoyance flares.  “you’re right,” she snaps, “i do know that.  you’ve always been something other than a friend to me.  we’ve  _never_  been friends.”

this is probably why poe wants them to fuck–that they argue all the time and she wishes her mind weren’t full of his lips against hers.  her heart is beating too quickly for thoughts like that.  

“no,” he agrees and his gaze is still burning into hers.  “no, we’ve never been friends.”  he sounds almost triumphant.  

the triumph is what frustrates her most.   _don’t do that thing where you lie to yourself_ , he’d told her–so what?  so he could feel triumphant?  and not do anything at all?

the squadron ships around them vanish, and ben puts the falcon into hyper space and rey gets to her feet, seething down at him.  he looks up at her and meets her gaze angrily and she can tell he’s about to get to his feet too, just so he can loom over her and so she grabs the front of his shirt and pulls his lips to hers.  

he makes a startled noise and rey’s hand tightens in his shirt.  he’s not fully out of his seat and she can feel his legs shaking until he settles back down, pulling her with him, his hand on the back of her neck, fingers brushing at her hairline.  when he pulls away, he’s breathing hard, and he makes to bite his lip before thinking better of it–a habit she’d noticed in him from the early days of their force bond.  there’s no triumph in his eyes now, no blazing look, no anything.  just nervousness–the same sort of nervousness he’d had when he’d held out his hand to her on snoke’s bridge.

 _we’ve never been friends,_ she thinks as she looks at him.  somehow they’d missed that stage.  they’d gone from enemies to…

to lovers.  that’s what they are.  except without the fucking.  somehow ben became the center of her universe and she became he center of his.  the moment they’d touched hands, perhaps, or the moment she’d sliced his face with his grandfather’s lightsaber, or the moment he’d found her in the woods and frozen her.  had they already been lovers, even when they were enemies?

“i wasn’t done,” she tells him, and he leans his head forward obligingly.  he urges her hips down so that she’s sitting on his lap now, and they have several hours of flight left and rey doesn’t need to ask him to know that they both want to spend it like this.  his hair is so soft under her fingers, his lips so warm against hers, and his hands so very gentle on her waist.  she cups his chin in her hands, and rests her forehead against his and says, “for the record, this isn’t because poe told us to.”

he snorts.  “i’d call it a catalyst,” and he nips at her lower lip.  

and rey can only agree as she slides her tongue between his lips.

* * *

they end up on a bunk, largely because the seat in the cockpit–while comfortable–creak and groan under their combined weight in a way that is distracting.  they end up on their sides in one of the narrower ones closer to the cockpit, ben pressing her back against the wall behind her as he kisses his way along her neck.  

rey’s heartbeat echoes through her body, louder than footsteps echoing in an empty star destroyer, louder than blasts from a new blaster at a monster in a mask, louder than the silence stretching through her ears when they’d first connected.  her heart sings to him and his–she feels it against her chest singing back.

she kisses his nose, kisses his cheeks, kisses his throat, her hands running over his shirt.  beneath the layer of fabric are the muscles she’s seen with her own two eyes, gleaming with sweat after he’d been training, and now, finally, she feels how firm those muscles are.  part of her wants to rip open his shirt, to see them again, but somehow that doesn’t feel right right now.

the kisses that had started out feverish, frantic almost have slowed down lazily now that the newness has worn off.  this is not a sprint, she realizes.  if they are lovers, let them be lovers, and they have all of space and time to love.  let them relish this moment, the way his breath tickles her face, the way his tongue tastes slightly like the lunch they’d had before taking to the stars, the way their sweat smells the same, somehow.  long and deep does she drink from him.  she is a desert child, and he is not a well that will ever run dry.  this she knows.  this they both know.

she rolls him onto his back and crouches over him, her legs spread over his hips–not quite touching him, though she knows that this is where touching could happen.  she can feel the heat of him even without touching him, and his hands graze her sides to rest gently on her rear and she can feel his breath trembling as he rubs.  first his touch is light, tentative and his lips have stilled against hers as though he can only concentrate on one thing at once, as though he cannot believe his own daring.  then it is more like kneading and a noise escapes rey’s throat because no one’s ever touched her like this before.  his fingers find knots in her muscles that she hadn’t even known were there and how strange, how  _intimate_  it feels because releasing muscular knots in her rear doesn’t seem like the sort of thing one does when savoring firsts.

except that this is ben, and somehow it doesn’t surprise her that he would find some little ache to try to ease.  

she sucks his upper lip between her teeth and his hips buck up towards hers and her eyes roll into the back of her head at the contact of them against that spot that’s growing damper and damper by the second.  he groans and his hands guide her hips down and she’s straddling him and she knows without looking, without ever having experienced it, that that bulge right between her legs–that’s him, hard and wanting.

everything else fades away.  his lips, his breath, his heartbeat, the only thing that rey can feel is him between her legs and the heat that’s pooling there between them–hot and bright like when they had ripped the lightsaber in half.  her whole body feels light as he his body presses heat into her slick undergarments, and she has never felt like this before, never when touching herself.  jakku is dry and hot, and ben–ben’s heat is a wet heat, a sweaty heat, a slick between her legs without her even touching herself heat.  and she moans and sinks into it, rocking herself against him, her chest running up and down his, her cunt running up and down his cock though both of them are still fully clothed.  his hands are on her ass still, but he is not kneading it now, he seems to be holding onto her as thoug his very life depends upon it and rey can’t blame him because she feels the same way when her body curls away from his and it’s her face against his chest now, her lips running over the rise and fall of his chest through his shirt as they roll together.

“oh–kriff–rey,” ben mumbles and his hands tighten against her ass and he inhales a choked gasp and rey feels more wet heat between them.  when she looks up at him, his eyes are closed, his nostrils are flared and his cheeks are as flushed as they are in battle.   _i did this to him,_ she thinks as she slows her hips.  the stiffness between her legs is starting to soften.  but the heat does not fade and when ben opens his eyes she sees galaxies in there.  

slowly, carefully, he rolls them over, his lips at her throat.  briefly he glances down at the front of his pants–a dark damp splotch front and center that rey can’t help but feel a little bit proud of–before he brings his lips to hers and kisses her slowly.  

but slowly isn’t what she wants.  she wants heat–that same wet heat he’d given her.  she tries to shift herself so her cunt presses against his leg now, but before she can really do that she feels his fingers at the front of her trousers, undoing the string that ties them in place before sliding them down into the deep of her.  rey wraps her arms around his neck, clinging to him as his fumbling fingers find their way home and it’s not long before she can see stars.


	68. "catharsis or rebirth"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@shitfrompage394](https://shitfrompage394.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: m

he loses.

he loses to her, himself to her, himself in her–the shape of her head, the sound of her growl, the way her fingers tighten in the skin against his spine.  

she is heat.

not the blistering heat of electricity being shot through him, shocking and painful and over before it begins.  nor even the unending heat of the jakku desert, dry and parching.  she is the heat of blood, wet and lifegiving, and when she pulls him closer to her, deeper into her, her teeth at his neck, her legs around his hips, he drowns in her.

for a desert sand rat, she has always brought water to him–sweat in duels, the rain from wherever she’d found luke, and the water from that cave.  she’s brought him the wetness of her blood and body and suddenly it is he who has lived in a desert all his life, parched of her, parched of this, and he could drink her dry and still want more.

he surrenders himself to her, to this, to them.  kylo–ben–it doesn’t matter who he is so long as she loves him, so long as she reaches up to brush away the sweat beading on his forehead, to kiss away the tears that are falling from his eyes as he spends himself for her, in her, with her.  he is born again in loving her, and maybe this time he will stand tall, the man he always might have been had the life not been sucked away from him.  

he loses himself in her, but this is not loss.

and as he collapses forward into the unfading warmth of her arms, he feels free.


	69. "Are we really gonna do this is public?" + "Someone is gonna hear you"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@rosered282](http://rosered282.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: post canon

she’s never seen fireworks before, and she smiles with delight as each of them ignites across the sky, exploding in little whirls and whorls of brightness, stars that burn to brightly to last long.  “they’re so beautiful,” she breathes as they go, and go, and go.  it must be every single one that’s ever been bought on this planet going off right now as people sing and dance with delight.   _the first order falls.  the republic is restored._

behind her, she hears talking and laughter.  her friends have mostly stopped paying attention to the illuminated sky.  they are laughing together, and toasting fallen friends, and leia organa is telling them all stories of the rebellion against the empire.

she senses ben behind her before he’s within arm’s reach and a moment later he’s standing behind her, leaning over her shoulder and rubbing his lips against her hair.  his arms rest on the railing on either side of her, boxing her in, and there’s a blanket draped over his his shoulder like a cape.  “aren’t you cold?” he asks her.

“no,” she shrugs.  she doesn’t get cold easily–a fact which surprises most of the people she speaks to.  jakku was brutally cold at night, and space is freezing.  cold is as familiar as heat.  and ben’s heat at her back–she melts into it.  “you’re here,” she whispers, turning her head to his and kissing a spot of skin next to his nose.  “you’re really here.”

he doesn’t say anything.  he glances back over his shoulder for just a second, then drops his lips to hers, kissing her deeply.  rey returns it eagerly.  she doesn’t think she’ll ever be over how his kisses make her feel–not if she lives to be a hundred.  her breath catches in her throat, her heart lurches forward and her soul seems to sing just at his touch.   _the force wanted this for us,_ she thinks.  all that pain, and misery, and suffering, and loneliness–at least they’d found each other through it all.  

his hand ghosts over her belly, finding the hem of her tunic and pushing up underneath it.  his skin burns against hers and she sucks on his lower lip and his hand pauses.  she feels his mind nudge hers, asking her without breaking away from her lips and she sends him a memory, her fingers between her legs on a lonely night when she was sixteen.  trembling, he dips his fingers down beneath the waistband of her trousers and she moans into his lips when he mimics motions she’d placed in his head.

“someone is gonna hear you,” he whispers into her lips. 

“they won’t notice,” she returns, confident that it’s the truth.  “please.”

“you made me beg.” his voice is so light that she feels the words in his breath more than hears them.  but the fireworks are flying–fire isn’t falling.  “why shouldn’t i make you?”

“because i’m with you now,” she says, “because that was how it had to be. please, ben.”  

he runs his tongue over her lips, and he thumbs her and she lets out another moan which he steals away from her with a kiss.  she feels him growing hard at her back, and she wriggles against him.  he gasps into her lips and a moment later she feels him slide a finger inside her, curling inward.  “like that?”

“yeah.  yeah like–” she kisses him because he’s got it.  she bites at his lip, reaches up a hand to caress his face, presses herself into his chest and cock as he moves his hands as she would–except not.  her hands never felt like this, big and sturdy.  two fingers inside her like that never made her feel so alive, and whenever she’s made herself flush and sigh, it’s never felt like the fireworks streaming across the sky.


	70. no touching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@spacedarcy](http://spacedarcy.tumblr.com)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: modern au

rey is a handsy drunk.

at first he’d just thought it was that she didn’t know her alcohol tolerance.  she’s young, after all.  ( _lecher_ , he has thought at himself angrily when staring in the mirror when shaving in the morning.   _she’s ten years younger than you._   and always, unhelpfully,  _dad’s ten years older than mom._ ) it might just be that she doesn’t know when enough’s enough, and she loses control of herself a little bit.

it takes him a while to realize that rey’s been drinking since she was fourteen and that she just likes touching him–a lot.  in inappropriate places–when she’s drunk.

like right now, when they’re sitting at a table with (her) friends and they’re all laughing about some internet meme he feels too old to understand (and yet, poe dameron, who is older than him by a few years, is sitting there chuckling, but poe’s always been young for his age and ben’s always been old for his ( _lecher.  she’s ten years younger than you_ )) and her hand doesn’t come to rest on his thigh so much as right on his zipper, which she’s fiddling with and–

“rey,” he hisses at her under the laughter as she tugs it down more.  “ _rey no touching.”_

except his dick, who has long since betrayed him to swear allegiance to her, is already twitching towards her hand and he takes a deep breath and wills himself not to go hard as she finishes her unzipping and slides her hand in.

force of will has never gotten him far, though, especially in the face of rey’s determination, and right now she is drunkenly determined to fondle him under the table.  

it starts uncoordinated–as though she’s grabbing him mostly for comfort and not because she actually wants to do anything.  but the more he stiffens under her touch, the more she starts to pump him, lazily and ben reaches for his beer and takes a long sip because his dick’s betrayed him and now even his lips aren’t able to tell her to stop because for some reason his similarly treasonous heart doesn’t want her to stop.  he’s looking poe dameron right in the eye as rey gives him a hand job under the table in a loud, crowded bar and for once in his life he feels younger than he is.

finn says something that makes them laugh and ben can’t even pretend to pay attention.  rey’s grinning, her nose scrunched up in amusement and her hand leaves his dick just long enough to slide under his boxers and really touch him.  ben hides his groan under a cough as she thumbs the slit at the tip of his dick and rose reaches over and pats him on the back.  “something go down the wrong pipe?” she asks him.

“yeah.  wrong pipe,” he says and rey squeezes hid dick a little tighter and fuck he’s going to cream right in his pants isn’t he?  if she keeps doing that and he knows better than to assume she’s going to stop.  once they’d tried doing orgasm denial but neither of them had had the self-control for that and he’d ended up coming all over the bed and making a big fucking mess.  

a big fucking mess, like what he is now, like what she turns him to as he wills himself to come quietly if he’s gotta come and it’s becoming increasingly clear that he’s going to.  no groans, no whimpers, no nothing.  he can do that.  he can do that.  he can do that.  

he mostly does that.  as all the blood rushes through him and he shoots hot jizz into his boxers, he makes something between a cough and a whimper that the table mistakes for a laugh at something that rey has just said.  she squeezes him through it, her thumb running along his shaft, over his too-sensitive tip.  then she leans over sideways on the bench next to him and rests her head on his shoulder, kissing his neck as he breathes.

“ew gross.  kissing,” finn teases.

“yeah, get a room,” laughs rose.

ben glances down at rey and her eyes are laughing and oh–oh he’ll replace  _that_  expression.

“yeah,” he agrees, gently taking her hand off his dick and trying to–as subtly as he can–zip himself back up.  “i think we need a room.”


	71. don't stop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@refined-by-fire](http://refined-by-fire.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: m  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

_ben, stop,_  his father when he’s running around the falcon in circle after circle. 

 _ben, stop,_ his mother when she’s reading through briefs and trying–always trying–to focus on something else.

 _ben, stop,_ his uncle tells him when he lets anger fuel him instead of peace.

 _ben, stop,_ snoke whispers when he’s trying, always always always, to find ways that show that he is loved, that they do care about him, care what he becomes, care what he has become.

“don’t stop,” she whispers underneath him and it’s all he can do not to come apart right there.  he’s barely inside her, can feel the way her stomach is writhing with nerves as he nudges a little deeper–but rey is nothing if not brave and when she wants something, wants him…he keeps going.  the heat of her sends warmth through every muscle in his body.  gone is the cold loneliness, she washes that away, and ben’s nostrils flare as he breathes as deeply as he can, pushes as deeply as he can.  

“don’t stop,” she whispers again when he’s gone as deep as he thinks he can go, and her hands find his ass and she pulls him deeper into her hips.  that’s rey, though–always pulling him deeper, always pushing him further, always caring about him more than anyone has ever cared about him in his life.  

“don’t stop,” he moans as she keeps pulling herself towards him, his eyes rolling into the back of his head.  she is so close now, he can feel the gentle pressure of the hair of her sex against his stomach.  he can feel the trembling of her stomach as she breathes, he can feel the thumping of her heart in his ears, in his own chest as the force mixes them together, holds them close, balances them.  and he starts to move, starts to roll his hips, slowly at first because he wants to experience every single centimeter of her warmth, of her love, wants to memorize every second of this.

“don’t stop,” she whispers, her arms tightening around his back and her hips rise to meet his.  he starts to move faster.  how perfect she is, how perfect this is, to be cared for, embraced, taken in, seen for all he is.

“don’t stop.  don’t stop.  don’t stop.”


	72. “I want you so badly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@occasionallycreative](http://occasionallycreative.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: m  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

she shouldn’t.  she wants anything but that, everything but that.  she wants to be cold, wants to be more brutal than the jakku wastelands.

but things are different now.  

there’s no going back.  there’s never going back.  

(“why does everyone want to go back to jakku?” a bittersweet smile because finn is not the same either.  finn–who had flung his arms around her with abandon, and who had covered a stranger with a blanket and brushed her hair out of her face.  finn, whose eyes hide thoughts that rey doesn’t understand because she wasn’t there.  finn, who is alive.  finn, who has changed.)

she lies in her bunk at night, breathing, trying to feel the force the way that luke had refused to teach her how.  she closes her eyes and sees mirrors of herself, spanning space and time–a little girl sobbing, an old woman eyes white with cataracts smiling contentedly as she putters about a flower garden.

and in between them?

the thrum of it, the push and pull of the force, whirls and whorls of space and time and locked within–

wanting.

waiting and wanting, that’s what rey is made of.  it is the stuff of her soul, boiled together with moments of searing rage and icy sadness.  waiting, wanting, rage, sadness–she shouldn’t still want him.

but she does.

she curls in on herself and closes her eyes and lets the waiting wanting rage sadness have her.

his hair is sweaty, his face flushed and this time, when he pushes the guard back with fire in his eyes, the first thing from his lips is “there’s still time to save the fleet.”  his voice is low, a growl.  she takes a moment to relish in it, the first words he has said since “i know what i have to do.”  

he reaches out with the force, she can feel it feel the cannons short circuit.  he had known where they were, had known how to reach.  and just like that her breath is gone as she stares at him.  

what would have changed, had this had happened.  she would have taken his hand, she would have stepped into the circle of his arms, she would have tilted her head up to press a kiss–unexpected–to the underside of his chin.  (she has seen finn press a kiss to rose’s forehead.  surely she can kiss too, if she wants.) she feels safe with him, safe enough to throw herself across the stars, and when he bends his head to kiss her forehead–

but no.

no that’s not right.

if she is rewriting, let her rewrite completely.  she feels safer than she should with him–this had somehow become true.  but it is not safety that leaves her lonely now–not with finn back, not with all her friends, this family she has found, so close.

his lips find hers, and the heat of the flaming curtains is nothing to what is pulsing in her heart now.  his breath–she has known his breath before.  he has stood too close before, his face too near hers before, but not near enough now, even as she opens her lips to his.  his breath is as she remembers it, and how wonderfully familiar it is.  how triumphant she is, tasting it like this.  

she reaches her hands up to run through his hair, sweaty yet soft and his hands drop to her hips, steadying because he is so tall, she has to stand on the tips of her toes if she’s going to stay like this.  and she wants to–wants to forever.  she has wasted enough of her life waiting for those who don’t love her, why shouldn’t she relish every moment of his tongue against hers, his hands holding her tightly, her fingers in his hair, her heart beating stronger, steadier than it had while they’d been fighting.  

a moment later, his hand is gone from her waist, and she hears a thud.  then he’s steering her back towards the throne that snoke had been sitting on.  he eases the two of them down onto it, her knees on either side of his hips and now it is her head that is higher than his as she runs her fingers over his chin.  now she doesn’t need to be held in place to be close to him, they can just be.  everything is safe–everyone she loves is safe and ben–

she feels ben stiffening underneath her.  his kisses are wetter, his breathing more ragged and the heat rolling off him is unlike any heat that rey has ever known.  she loves the smell of his sweat, the taste of his tongue and when his lips leave hers, she makes a plaintive noise that quickly turns into a sigh as his lips suck at her neck as his hands rise, trembling, to her breasts.

“ben,” she whispers now that her lips are free.  “ben,” and she pulls herself closer to him.  his stiffness right at the juncture of her legs feels divine and rey is starting to lose herself to the smell and feel of everything.  she closes her eyes and coursing through her the force that connects them both.  she can feel his want, feel his need, feel his desire, feel his love.

 _you’re not alone,_ he’d told her.  and she never will be again, not with ben like this, his hands and lips and breath all hers.

had she let the wanting take full control, she would have gone further in her dreams.  she would let herself shuck off her pants, let his hands roam between her legs, let his lips say words that she has longed to hear ever since she is a girl.

but sadness creeps in suddenly, because he is not there.  he did not come with her.  he did not even try to save her friends.  amilyn holdo would have flown the raddus into the supremacy before they’d gotten that far.  and when rey opens her eyes, she is in the falcon again, and the lack of him is crushing her.

“i want you so badly,” she whispers to herself, opening her eyes, not expecting anyone to here.

“i know,” she hears him whisper, light years away.  “me too.”


	73. ephemeral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@rjrambles](https://tmblr.co/m2bMLYfjMqih8x8gBDSx8fQ) and [@kuresoto](http://kuresoto.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

“i can’t…get it to work,” rey mutters to herself.  she’s got a pair of tweezers in hand and the crystal is split.  she has salvaged and remade much in her life, but a lightsaber–

the books she’d stolen from ahch-to are useless.  she can’t read the lettering that they’re written in, and if there are instructions for the creation of a lightsaber, there are no diagrams she can use.  everything is

_trust your feelings_

_a whisper of wind through grass though she is among the stars and not on a salt-soaked island_

instinct. 

she clicks the ignition and the crystal flashes bright for a moment, but not for very long before guttering and dying.  maybe she and kylo had truly broken the thing.  maybe it was truly dead.   _let the past die.  kill it, if you have to._

she shudders and her mouth goes dry and her ears go fuzzy and she looks up.  he’s sitting there watching her on the other side of her workbench, the same guarded look on his face that she’d seen every time the force had–most unhelpfully–continued to connect them.

“i can help you,” he says quietly.

“and if i don’t want your help?” 

he flinches.  something about him is different now.  he seems broken, somehow, as though his confrontation with luke–more than his murdering snoke–had set a darkness behind his eyes.  but this darkness was more sadness and fear than the bleakness with which he’d contentedly have let all her friends die.

“i don’t want to face you unarmed,” he says quietly.  “let me help you.  please.”

 _you need a teacher,_  he’d screamed at her in the snow.  

and looking down at the broken saber  _that lightsaber it belongs to me_ she knows she still does.  at least in this.   _will that make it his?_ she wonders,  _if he helps?_

she remembers how easily his own saber had flown to her hand when she’d called it, big and heavy and hot when she’d ignited it and prepared to swing.  this saber will be lighter, smaller with the shaft she has prepared.

she blinks at him, nods, and he leans forward, looking down. 

they broke it together.  she supposes it’s the force’s will that they rebuild together.


	74. dulcet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@voicedimplosives](https://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com/) and [@rosered282](https://tmblr.co/mlqFQuACLsRpqYtOWo9e8bA)
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

people forget that the desert gets cold at night, that the brutal heat of the sun evaporates when it sets and the heat it created disappears off into the heavens above and you are left with none of it.  jakku will destroy you with heat or cold, starvation or thirst, loneliness or corrupt society.  it doesn’t particularly care how it destroys you–just that it does.

the heat of him is not the heat of jakku.  

it is steady and when she wakes in the middle of the night–habit that comes because it’s never good to sleep the full night through, or else someone will come and pick your bones clean–there he is, breathing quietly behind her, her back to his chest, his lips to her neck and his knees tucked under hers.  he frames her, and she feels safe, and warm.  not hot, not cold.  warm.

 _i didn’t sleep well until you,_ he confessed to her once.   _i thought killing snoke would do it, but it didn’t…_  he sleeps more deeply than anyone she’s ever known.  he sleeps like the dead, so deeply he does not dream, as if in finally sleeping now he is catching up for all the sleep he’d ever lost.   _i never slept well–not even as a baby._ because of snoke, she knows he does not say.  how many years of sleep has he lost, she wonders as she nestles back into him, wriggling his arm up over her side because she likes the weight of it there, likes feeling tucked into him, feeling wanted and safe at last.

space is cold, but ben is warm, and the rise and fall of his chest behind her–nothing has ever been sweeter.


	75. daddy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for [@haraldskaer](https://tmblr.co/mldMZGsUZp6ZBcT28p-KTvA). prompt from [@reylohardkinks](https://reylohardkinks.tumblr.com/post/171910698068/kylo-accidentally-calls-rey-daddy-while-she-pegs)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: explicit sexual content, pegging, daddy kink

she reaches down to stroke his dick as she eases the strap-on into him and he lets out a choked noise in the back of his throat.

“easy there,” she murmurs, pushing the silicon phallus a little deeper into him.  he bucks his hips, his cock running smooth against her hand as he takes her in deeper, deeper, deeper.  “i’ve got you.”

this isn’t the first time they’ve done this.  the first time had been an adventure–learning how much lube they needed, how much she needed to stretch him out.    every single moment of it, rey had felt self conscious.  she hadn’t really thought about how much she was expected to be the one recieving until it was kylo spread out on the bed, clutching his knees, his teeth worrying at his lower lip as she pressed the strap-on they’d seen good reviews for on amazon into his ass.

she’s used to it now, though, and as she eases the strap-on into him as deep as it will go just yet, she watches as his eyes roll under closed eyelids and his lips part, shining from his own saliva as she runs her fingers comfortingly over his shaft–avoiding the tip.  she doesn’t want to overstimulate him.  not yet, anyway.

she bends down and presses a kiss to his chest, letting the tips of her breasts brush against his skin.  his hand flutters to her hair and she looks up at him, her lips still on the edge of his pecs.  he’s watching her, his eyes open and hazy, and she sucks his skin between her teeth, knowing he will bruise and that tomorrow, when they’re showering together, he’ll roll his eyes about how easily his skin reacts to her teeth.

“ready?” she breathes into his chest, and he swallows.

she sits back up, and pulls one of his legs up to hook over her shoulder, her hand grabbing his thigh.  the other she bends slightly, resting her hand on his hamstring.  this, she has found, makes it easier to thrust into him.  she hadn’t thought about what kind of support she’d need to do this ever before.  it’s not quite the same as riding him–it uses a different combination of muscles.

and she begins, her fingers tightening into his muscles, into his skin, and ben’s head falls back against the pillows, his eyes fluttering shut again as his nostrils flare.  

“that’s right,” she breathes to him as she thrusts her hips, her thighs snapping back and forth, her knees firmly pressed against his rear.  “let yourself go.”

he’s a tense man–always so tense, and there’s something so unbelievably powerful about watching as he seems to melt into the bed.  his stomach muscles ripple before her eyes as though he is trying to keep his insides in place as she fucks into him.  his hands are twitching, his  _dick_  is twitching and dribbling strings of white precum onto his abdomen, and beneath his eyelids, his eyes are rolling. 

she smiles to herself and increases her pace slightly and he lets out a whimper. “rey.”  but he certainly doesn’t seem to disapprove as he starts to writhe underneath her, trying to push himself even deeper onto the strap-on.  “more, please.  rey.”

“more what, sweetheart,” she whispers, stopping her hips completely.

he whines incoherently, and rey moves the hand from his hamstring to stroke his dick again.  “use your words,” she urges him.  “you’re being so good for me right now,” his hands tighten in the bedspread, and his eyes open for a moment.  “so very good for me, but i need to know what you want.”

he swallows, still watching her.  

“fuck me.  fuck me hard.”

rey turns her head and presses a kiss to his ankle.  then she slams her hips into him, again and again, so quickly that her heart is beating a wild tattoo in her chest.  “like this?”

“rey,” he moans, writhing himself onto the strap on again.  “fuck.”

“more?”  and even though the muscles in her ass are beginning to burn from the exertion she pushes faster, pushes deeper, holding her breath as her fingers tighten in the skin of his ankle and leg.  

“more, daddy, fuck–” and his eyes fly open and in that moment she knows he knows what had just slipped out of him, can see the look of surprise mixed with horror as his face twitches and his cock sends cum flying so far up his chest that some of it strikes him in the chin.  

“that’s right,” she whispers, reaching a hand down to stroke his dick and he whimpers again and tries to pull away from her hand–a motion that sends him deeper onto the phallus strapped to her hips.   _overstimulation_ , she thinks.  his cheeks are bright red and ordinarily he’d have closed his eyes, let the rush of orgasm take his body away from him but his nostrils are flared and his breathing is ragged and as rey slowly pulls the strap on from him she knows his head is full of everything–of his father, of snoke, of luke, and of her.  her, as she unhooks the strap on and tosses it to the floor.  she’ll clean it later.  her is what she wants him to focus on.  the rest–they have no place in her bedroom.  

 _daddy,_  she thinks, half-amused.  if he can manage to say call her that without thinking of the rest, she thinks she might enjoy it.  the fact that he’d cum while thinking of the rest…well…she knows kylo well enough that she really shouldn’t be surprised by that.  in fact, she’s really not.

she bends down to run her tongue along his relaxing shaft and he lets out a noise in the back of his throat when she presses her tongue into the slit at his tip.  then she licks her way up along his chest, licking his chest clean of each drop of salty, bitter cum until she’s lying flat against his chest, nibbling at his chin.

“daddy?” she whispers at last and heat creeps across his chin.

“i–sorry.”

“don’t be sorry.  i don’t mind,” she whispers.  “so long as  _i’m_  your daddy in this room.”  she kisses his soft, wide lips and his hand comes to rest on her ass.  “and so long as you keep being so very good for me.”

“i might be able to manage that,” he whispers and his eyes are bright.  he’s starting to relax now, she can see that and his hand drips down the seam between her legs and a moment later she feels his finger slip into her.


	76. "I bet you want me pretty bad now, huh"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@briarlily](http://briarlily.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: modern au, sexual content, reylo baby

“hottest wife you’ve ever seen.”

“you know, you’re not wrong.”

“bet you want me pretty bad now, huh?”

she’s lying there on the bed, unable to see her feet and a bowl of ice cream is resting on her belly because it’s so conveniently there and shelf like and the _least_  the little creature inside her can do if it’s making her crave goat cheese and cherry ice cream at two in the morning is hold the bowl for her.  they have a deal–her and little unnamed solo.  they have a good thing going on.  

poor ben gets caught in the lurch with a wife whose stomach is too swollen to move–lying there in ratty old pajamas, her hair oilier than she really wants to think about (fucking hormones), and dark circles under her eyes because little unnamed solo has a midnight and four-am kicking habit that wakes her up.  which, she supposes, will prepare her for when little unnamed solo is little _named_ and _wailing_  and _hungry_  solo.  well, they’ve already got the hungry bit down.

“anything else i can get you two?” ben asks from the doorway.

“nah, we’re good,” rey says, licking the spoon clear of ice cream before digging in for some more.  “this was just what we wanted.”

ben comes over and sits back down on the bed.  he kisses rey’s belly, then her cheek, before giving her a look.  

she knows that look.

“i was joking,” she says.  “i know i’m not at my hottest, you don’t have to give me the bedroom eyes.”

“i’m not giving you the bedroom eyes,” he says, but he totally is, and rey rolls her eyes and eats another bite of ice cream.

“you’re really not getting laid if you think this is hot,” she says, waving her hand up and down over her heavily pregnant form.

“i get laid plenty,” he says and rey smirks at him.  part of why she doesn’t particularly feel bad about sending him out for ice cream at two in the morning is that her pregnancy hormones have made her want to suck his dick like twice a day for the past two months.  she hasn’t actually wanted him to fuck her.  just to suck his dick.  a lot.  she takes another bite of ice cream so as not to keep thinking about his dick.  usually if she starts thinking about it, she wants to suck it.  “and you are hot.”

she raises her eyebrows.  “really?  i’m like four times the size i was a year ago and you think i’m hot?”

he leans his head down next to her, pressing his lips to her neck before breathing in his ear, “do you really think the sight of you _pregnant with my child_  isn’t hot to me?  really?”

“i’m just–”

“your scope of what’s hot is very limiting,” he shrugs, trying to look nonchalant but his voice sounds triumphant.  

“we’ve had like fifteen whole conversations about how you think my ass is hotter than my boobs, and my boobs are like twice their normal size right now meanwhile my ass is losing all its form because i’m bedridden and–”

“pregnant with my child.”

“do you have a pregnancy kink you didn’t warn me about?  where’s our ketubah?  was that in the fine print?  i trusted you not to jerk me around in aramaic.”

he’s laughing, and god how she loves it when he smiles.  his whole face lights up and he looks about ten years younger.  he bends his head to kiss her and has the _audacity_  to move the ice cream off of little unnamed solo so he can pull her onto her side and curl himself around her, his hands brushing her cheek and reaching up to tug her oily hair out of its messy pony tail.  “you really are desperate–my hair’s gross right now.”

“will you stop calling me desperate if i admit to having a pregnancy kink?”

“probably not, though don’t think i’m not registering that subtle admission.”

“and what about if i say i have a rey kink.”

she rolls her eyes as loudly as she can.  “that was a bad line.”

“it’s two in the morning.”

“if you’re gonna try and get in my pants after not letting me finish my ice cream, you’re gonna have to do better than that.”

“like this?”

and his hand slips into her pajama bottoms and he runs his fingers along her slit and rey’s breath catches in her throat and her skin starts to tingle.  the last person who touched her down there was a doctor because–because–

well because she’s spent too much time blowing ben.  why has she been doing that?  his dick tastes great and all, but… her eyelids flutter shut and she shifts her hips–or tries to.

she and little unnamed solo have a good thing going on when it comes to midnight cravings.  not so much in the ease of access to her vagina when she wants it.  like right now.  

she makes a slight noise of frustration and ben pauses.  “at me, or at the kid?”

“i feel cockblocked.”

“i hear that’s part of parenting.”

she snorts and he kisses her, his tongue sweeping lazily through her mouth.  “you know? i thought you were crazy when you were asking for goat cheese ice cream.”

“did you just taste some?  it’s good, right?”

“yeah.”  he laughs into her lips and she wraps her arm around him, pulling him closer to her and kissing him again.  his hand returns to her slit and he continues rubbing it gently, easing moisture out of her before slipping his fingers in.  

“how are we going to do this?”  the last time they’d really fucked, she’d been significantly less large, and it hadn’t felt ungainly.  she doesn’t think she could ride him without falling over.

“hands and knees?” he asks and he helps her onto them.  her belly rests on the bed but almost as soon as she’s in position she starts shaking her head.  “no, if you fuck me as hard as i want to, i’m gonna collapse on it.”

“i’m not going to let you collapse on the baby, no matter how hard i make you cum.”

“no,” she says and she sits down.  suddenly, she’s miserable.  horny and miserable and huge and her husband has a pregnancy kink and she just feels like a whale with a thing she’ll crush if she fucks properly.  stupid hormones.

ben bends down to kiss her and a moment later he’s kneeling between her legs, bending them so that her feet are flat on the bed.  “will your hips be ok?” he asks as he lines her up to him, testing the position before either of them drop their pajama bottoms down.  her legs are strong, but her back has been killing her lately and she wants to cry now because she’s only been up in this position for like fifteen seconds and she already wants to stop.  “hey,” he whispers, bending down over her.  “none of that.  we’ll figure it out.”

 _we won’t,_ rey wants to cry at him, but instead she mutters again, “bet you want me pretty bad now, huh?”

“always,” he whispers kissing her.  “do you want me to eat you out?”

“i want you inside me.”

“then i will,” he whispers, but rey is already biting back stupid horny hormonal tears and she curls back on her side and buries her face in the pillow.

ben curls around behind her, kissing her neck, her cheek, her ear, whispering, “i didn’t take you for a quitter.”

“that wasn’t the right thing to–” but she stops short because he’s tugging at the waist of her pajama bottoms and she feels his dick poking into her ass.  “oh.”

“you nailed it,” he whispers and his fingers find her slit again, rubbing, checking to see if she’s wet enough.  

“bet you’re proud of that pun, aren’t you.”

he doesn’t reply–he just sucks on her neck and a moment later she sighs as he eases himself into her.  she wriggles her ass against him and shifts her leg, and he hooks his hand over her hip to find her clit as he starts to ease himself in and out of her.  she can feel his heart beating against her back, warmth spreading through her from him and from the baby.  

“god you’re so tight like this,” he moans into her.

“not for long,” she snorts and he laughs.  his hand leaves her clit to rub at her belly, before making his way up to rub at one of her breasts.  they’re so tender, and she moans as he thumbs lightly at her nipple.  

“can’t wait for these to leak milk.  if you think i’ve got a pregnancy kink…”

“ _ben_ ,” she squeals and he bites her neck as he slams his hips into her, thrusting hard and fast as his lips trail along her neck, her shoulder, her cheek, her ear.  his hand leaves her breast and finds her clit again, and rey finds that she misses the light pressure on her nipples so she reaches one hand up to keep rubbing at it while the other she reaches behind her to run her fingers through his hair.  

between his speed and his very practiced fingers, it’s not long before she’s gasping and coming for the first time in far too long and the baby is kicking inside her, undoubtedly curious as to why its recently increasingly inactive mother’s heart is suddenly beating so intensely.  _it’s ok, your dad’s just making me feel alive,_ she thinks as ben pulls his hand away from her sensitive clit and rests it on her hip instead as he continues thrusting into her from behind.  the baby is writhing in her and ben is filling her up completely and she sighs and turns her head to kiss along his jaw until he chokes out her name and cums inside her.

she leaves her lips at his pulse as he comes down from his orgasm.  he wraps his arm around the underside of her belly and rey wriggles against his chest, feeling warm and content.  the baby’s kicks slow, and as ben’s dick starts to go limp inside her, she sighs at the way her whole body is relaxing.  she might actually be asleep soon.  

except that that’s more than just her slick and ben’s cum on her legs–there’s a lot more than just that–and ben seems to be growing aware of that right at the same time as she is.  

“ben?”

“yeah?”

“you ready?”

“are you?”

“let’s find out?”


	77. louder!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [@ilittlealicestuff](https://ilittlealicestuff.tumblr.com/)
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: modern au

“your parents could be home at any second,” rey hisses when ben grabs her waist and lifts her up onto the counter.

“i know,” he whispers into her neck, his breath coming in hot against her skin.  “but they’re not here now.”

“ben!” 

he pauses, and that shit-eating grin crosses his face, the one that makes him look uncannily like his dad.  he leans forward, his lips brushing her ear, and whispers, “louder.”

she hits him.  “ben!” she makes her voice harder, because this has got to stop.  she wants it to stop.  doesn’t she?

he hasn’t pushed her further than that.  in fact, he leans his long torso away from her–his groin still decently close to hers, she notes–and is watching her his grin slipping a bit.  

“we don’t have to,” he says quietly, seriously.  “if you don’t want to.”   _but i want to,_  she can hear him not saying, can feel against her thigh.   _and i want to too._

“fast,” she tells him, reaching a hand out and pulling his lips to hers.  “and the second we hear that car in the garage, we stop–no matter how close we are.”

“done,” he grins and his fingers are at the buttons of her blouse, tugging them open just enough to see her breasts.  he tugs the cups of her bra down so that they pop out over the underwire and he bends his head to kiss them and rey sighs and runs her hands through his hair.  

“ben,” she sighs.

“louder,” he murmurs into her skin, his teeth tugging lightly, deliciously at her nipples.

“ben,” she moans a little more loudly, and his hands tighten on her hips.  “ben!” and his hands tear at the button of her jeans, and his lips leave her chest long enough to tug them down to her ankles and completely off.

“ben,” she cries out when he’s back in her arms, fumbling at his own jeans now, and “ben!” she practically screams when he pushes into her, his hips snapping against hers faster and deeper than when they usually do this, though whether because she’s being loud or because he’d promised her _fast,_ she does not know, does not care.  

“oh, fuck, ben!” she screams when she comes, his fingers on her clit, his cock in her all the way to the hilt.  “ben,” she moans as her body goes boneless, as she leans forward against him as he keeps fucking her, his motions growing erratic and his heart pulsing fast through the veins in his neck that she’s kissing and sighing “ben,” into.  

when he comes, he rests his forehead against hers, kisses her slowly, traces her cheeks with his fingers that smell like her, and rey smiles up at him, blissed out and forgetting that the world exists beyond the two of them for just a moment.

“you two done in there or am i going to want to bleach my eyes?”  

han solo sounds bemused and rey squeaks and ben jerks out of her, his hands flying to his dick and shoving it back in his pants as rey pulls her tits back into her bra.  

they hadn’t heard the car, hadn’t heard his parents come back.

but his parents had heard them.


	78. parenthood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 different prompts in the same universe
> 
> tags: canon divergent/compliant, post canon  
> rating: g

“hope stop it.”

“daddy,” hope whines, tugging at his pant leg.

“give me thirty seconds, i’ll be right there.”

“ _daddy.”_

shmi gurgles up at him from the changing table, rey’s hazel eyes glowing contentedly up at him now that the dirty diaper is gone.  ben finishes powdering her and changing her, then hoists her up to his shoulder and crouches down and picks up hope and slings her over the other.  hope lets out a happy shriek.  

“all right, where to?” he asks.

“stories!  story time!” hope squeaks into his back, squirming a little to get more comfortable over his shoulder.  he keeps a hand firmly on her ankle.  she has been known to squirm right off him and he’d vastly prefer that she giggle happily while his wrist strains to keep her dangling than have her little head smash against the ground.   _i’d catch her_ , he thinks, knowing that it was true.  he’d always catch her before she hit the ground, freeze her mid-air the way–he gulps–the way uncle luke had done when he’d been a kid, excited to see his mother’s brother.  

(“ _do i get a brother too, mommy?”_   _“maybe one day, ben.”_  but there hadn’t been a brother, and he was ultimately glad of that.  just as he had been glad when hope had asked–before they’d known how to tell her that shmi was growing in rey’s womb–whether she could have a sister.)

“what sort of stories do you want?” ben asks, dragging his head out of the past.   _let the past go, ben.  you hold onto it more than i do,_ rey had screamed at him across a burning field, saber in hand, and she’d been right.  why was she always right?  why couldn’t he ever be–

“the sand princess! the sand princess!” and ben smiles as he settles down on the bed, letting hope slide off his shoulder so she can clamber under her blankets.  he changes shmi’s position so that she’s lying on his knees, her belly in the air and she waves her feet around for a second, trying to get them closer to her mouth.  shmi has an unfortunate habit of sucking on her own toes just because she can.  ( _“unfortunate only if she doesn’t grow out of it,”_  rey had laughed when ben had pointed it out.)

“once upon a time,” ben tells her, “there was a strong sand princess…” and hope sits there happily, listening to a highly doctored version of rey’s life.  he’d always liked his own father’s stories best, after all, and it had taken him years to piece together that the bold smuggler was actually his dad.  he tells her about how the sand princess could build anything, fight anything, and if she’d wanted to, she could have brought the galaxy to its knees.  but she hadn’t.  she hadn’t wanted that.  she’d just wanted her family back.

“daddy?” hope asks, and he pauses.  she hasn’t ever interrupted him at this part.  “did she ever get her family back?  you never tell me that.”

ben glances at hope, then down at shmi whose feet are still in her mouth and who is looking up at him with all the adoration that a baby can possibly muster.  

“no,” he says.  “no, she never found her parents.  but she did make a new family.”

“she did?” hope asks excitedly.  

“yes.”

“with who?” 

“bedtime!” rey calls, poking her head through the door, and ben heaves a sigh of relief.  

“mommy!  who’d the sand princess marry?”

“you want me to ruin the surprise?” rey asks without missing a beat.  she crosses to hope’s bed and presses a kiss to the top of her daughter’s head, then she picks up shmi and checks her diaper.

“i got it,” ben says, and rey glows down at him.  he bends to kiss hope’s cheek while rey tucks shmi into her cradle.  he follows her out into the hallway.

“you have fun?” he asks her, wrapping an arm around her.  almost immediately he feels warm.  every time he touches her, he feels warm.  every time is like that first time.  she stands on the tips of her toes and presses her lips to his.  

“it was wonderful,” she smiles.  “the girls were good?”

he glances back at the darkened room.  “the girls are perfect.”

“what on earth are you going to tell hope about the dark knight?  she _hates_  him.”

ben chuckles.  “i might leave that to you,” he says bending his head to hover his lips against hers.  “you saw the light in him, after all.  maybe you can make her see that too.”

* * *

 _she’s being impossible,_  he hears rey think.   _i would have killed for a bath at her age._

_want me to take it?  it only feels only fair given how much trouble i caused my dad when he tried to give me baths._

he catches the wordless sting that rey tries to hide from him, that he had had a father who’d loved him and he’d–

 _“he would have disappointed you,”_ ben had told her.  dimly, as though watching a holo of someone else’s life, he sees his dad setting him down in the tub.   _“come on, kid.  gotta get you good and clean for lando.”_

_“uncwe wanwo?”  
_

_“yup.  lando’s coming.”  
_

his reverie is shattered by a screeched “NO!”

“ben!”

 _i’m a terrible mother,_ rey thinks as he enters the bathroom, looking frustrated and miserable at once.

“you’re not,” he whispers to her as he passes.  he doesn’t mind using their force bond to communicate when they’re in different rooms, but he remembers realizing his parents shared glances he’d never understand and realizing it was one more way they weren’t including him in whatever they were doing.  “ok–why are you giving your mom so much trouble.”

“i took a bath yesterday,” hope whines.  

“yeah, me too.  and i’m taking one again later.”

“i’m not dirty, though.”

“yeah, but you’re not clean.  come on, sweetheart.”  he crouches down next to the tub and rey disappears behind him.

 _you’re really not,_ he thinks at her when she’s gone.  she doesn’t reply, but he feels misery there.  

“no,” hope pouts.

“look, you’d be done already if you just sat still and let us clean you,” he points out.  “because you’re having this bath one way or another.  what’s not to like about baths?  you used to love them.”  she had.  when she’d been small enough to fit in his hand, born a little early and always so calm.  she’d sat there in the water, burbling happily and splashing and giggling.  

“i don’t like when the soap gets in my eyes.  it hurts,” she mumbles.

“what if i promise to keep the soap out of your eyes?”

“promise?”

“i promise.”  he leans over and kisses the top of her head.  she has his same dark hair, and rey’s face in miniature.  he sends the force out to cover her eyes as he sudses her hair for her and she flinches in fear of the soap that trickles around her eyes but never into them.  

when she’s clean, he drains the tub, wraps her in a towel and hoists her up over his shoulder, making her giggle.  “your mom can keep soap out of your eyes too.  you just need to tell her,” he says as he carries her to the bedroom where rey is sitting there, rocking shmi and looking a little easier.  “you ok?” he asks her quietly as he puts hope down and goes to find her pajamas.

rey gives him a look before turning to hope.  “not too bad?”

“daddy kept the soap out of my eyes,” hope says, standing there buck naked in the middle of the room as ben unfolds her sleep shirt.  “can you do that too?”

“yes, sweetheart i can.”

“thank you mommy.”

rey’s face cracks into a smile and her eyes get very bright.  “i love you sweetheart.”

“i love you mommy.”  then, vehemently, “i hate baths though.”

“even without soap in your eyes?”

hope frowns and ben snorts and tugs her onto his lap to get her ready for bed.


	79. have you been good?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @spacedarcy
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: canon divergent/compliant

“have you been good?” she asks him and his breath catches.  (he has never been good, this has always been the problem.  but for rey, he might nearly believe it.)

“i’m trying,” he whispers to her.  anger is more his nature than calm, and he doesn’t know if you can be good and angry.  ( _rey is angry and she is good_ , a distant voice in his mind tells him.  he loves her anger.  when she is angry, he doesn’t have to be.)

“that’s good,” she whispers.  “trying is good.”  she gives him a soft smile, and rubs her nose against his cheek.  he can feel her breath across his skin.  he swallows.  he wants to be good for her, but oh–oh she makes him want to be anything but good.

* * *

the first time she kisses him, his breath fails him.  his lips fail him, his tongue fails him, everything except his pounding heart in his ears fails him when rey ducks her eyes, flushing slightly.  her eyes are bright, her lips are wet, and it takes every piece of concentration in his body to maintain control because his insides are rioting and all he wants to do is grab her head and pull her lips back to his and never let them go–never let her go.

instead, he is good.  he takes her hand and brushes his thumb along her palm.  he leans forward, nudging his nose against hers, and kisses her again.

* * *

“that’s so good,” she moans under his lips, her hips bucking towards his face.  he loves the smell of her, the taste of her, the smooth slick feel of her sex.  she is flushed and pink under her fading tan, and she is biting her lip to queit the moans that are ripping out of her.  her hips wave unconsciously underneath his hands, and he tightens his hold on her.

“be good,” he whispers to her folds, knowing she’ll hear him somehow because the force has made them loud in one another’s minds and everything but them has become blurred.  she positively purrs and looks at him, her eyes full of fire.

she stills her hips, and his tongue nudges her clit and eases past its hood and a moment later she’s crying out and arching her back and he can feel her tremors through his lips.  he kisses her through it.

she kisses him through his, after all.

* * *

she calms his nerves.  when first he’d extended his hand to her, ungloved and heart in his throat because when, _when_  was the last time he’d actually touched someone? (his father, touching his face before he’d fallen to the bowels of a doomed planet, rey screaming and crying in horror and disgust…) when first he’d extended his hand to her, everything in him had been screaming in fear, in terror.  how was it that she had come to trust him?  and could he deserve that? he was a monster, after all.

her monster.

her good monster.  could monsters be good?  

rey seemed to think so, and ben–well, he doesn’t mind being a monster so much if he can be a good one.  he doesn’t mind being terrible if rey still looks at him with trust and understanding, determined to defend him from the worst in himself.

for her, he can be good–whatever good means and that calms him.

calms him so that when he knows she isn’t going to run from him (“ _the fleet!_ ” he could have kissed her but all she could think about was the fleet.  maybe he would have gone with her if she’d kissed him first), when he knows she is going to stay, he lets himself wonder what will happen if he is bad.

good means rey riding him until she’s breathless, kissing her through her peaks and letting her do with him as she wills.

and bad–is what he wants bad?  can it be?

* * *

“have you been good?” he asks her as he strokes around–around but never touching–her clit.  he has her hands pinned in one of his above her head, while the other teases her, his lips on her sternum.  he licks the sweat that’s beading there away, relishing in this other taste of her–not saliva, not essence.  sweat–the way he’d first smelled her back in the forest.

his heart is in his throat.  how is it that even when he has her pinned down, is teasing her into incomprehensible mewls, she still is the one with power over him?  that when she gasps and begs for him, when he sheathes himself inside her and ruts into her so fast he loses his mind, she is the one with the power?  he can think he’s in control, can try to take it, but somehow he’s still in thrall to her.  (ah–but how familiar that feels.  and yet he does not mind it from rey.  does not mind it, because when rey looks at him, it is with love in her eyes, not greed, not anger, not disappointment.  her breathless lips are trying to say _i love you_  as tears leak out of her eyes and her whole body contracts beneath him.)

“i don’t know,” she whispers to him when they are done.  “have i been good?”

“you’re a better judge of that than i am,” he murmurs, kissing her sweat-dampened hair.  

she pauses, considering, then gives him a positively devious look.  “no, i don’t think i have been.  and what are you going to do about it?”


	80. crablo ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aionimica made me do this
> 
> rating: m?  
> tags: crabs?? au??

> soft crablo ren time inspired [by](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwtop.com%2Fnews%2F2014%2F02%2Fcrabs-birds-and-bees-effects-of-crab-sex-life-on-maryland-industry%2Fslide%2F1%2F&t=Zjc3MGJiZWE4OWE2NzhiZjU0OGYzNDlkZjdjNDRjNjg0YTBmOGQ1ZCw5N2pjclQzaw%3D%3D&b=t%3AbtoMFHJZ7GlRUmpQYQRvkw&p=https%3A%2F%2Fgalacticprideandprejudice.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F173134612867%2Fsoft-crab-embrace&m=1).  
> 
> are they crabs? are they crab people? you decide.   ~~god what am i doing.~~

she knows that she is old enough when her eyes start to see differently.  

the sea is not a safe place, and rey learned long ago to fight in it.  her shell is strong, her pincers strong, her determination strong.  no crab has ever bested her, and any who has tried has faced the full brunt of her might.

but her sight is different now and when she sinks down in the sands she knows her time has come.  males are appearing, drawn to her through the chemicals she is emitting into the water.  some are small, some are large, and all of them know that this is her chance to mate–the only one she’ll ever have.  

rey wishes they would go away.  all of them are weaker than she is.  she can see that in their size, in their gaze, in the way they are all trying to impress her.   _i want the largest,_ she thinks, _one who is my equal._

but none of them are, she can see that.  they are lesser beings, and rey wants them to go away.  she is more than just a thing to be mated.  if she is to mate at all, let it be someone who will not weigh her down.  

(somewhere, a curling corner of her mind whispers, _someone who will keep you safe.  isn’t it tiring to fend for yourself for so long?_ )

a mate who will not abandon her or her child–as her parents did.

rey hardens her heart even as her shell begins to crack.  the males approach her, waving their claws, showing their strength.  two of them begin to fight, and then a third joins the frey, and soon they are cracking at one anothers shells with grips strong enough to break.  

“is this what you want?” he asks and she swivels her gaze to him.  he is crouched in the sand behind her, his shell dark, his eyes darker, and rey lifts herself up slightly.  odd that he is not standing tall and proud, that it is she who raises herself to him, not the other way around.

when she stands, though, he raises himself up as well.  he is massive–easily the largest to have been drawn to the scent of her weakening shell, and rey feels her legs begin to shake.  not with fear.  rey is not afraid of anything.  she doesn’t know what it is.

“i don’t want any of this,” rey responds quietly over the sound of dueling males.  

he reaches for her, his shell brushing the side of her head, and she can feel her head turn towards his touch.  

behind her she hears one of the males shout and–quick as a flash–the dark-shelled male passes her and knocks one of them down into the sand without another word.  when he turns back to her, rey’s heart lurches.   _he is the strongest,_ she thinks.   _but will he leave me?_

what does it matter if she is left behind?  she has made it this far on her own.   _but he asked what i wanted._

did he care?  or was it a ploy to get in her shell, to take her when she is soft and shellless at the only opportunity?

“you know what you want,” he whispers and he makes his way off across the sands towards a protective outcropping of stone.  

her shell weakens.

she follows him.

he helps her climb from it carefully among the stone, his gaze steady and even. “i will keep you safe,” he whispers to her, taking her in his arms.  he is warm, now that he is so close.  rey feels safe.  she does not remember when last she felt safe.  she rests her head against his shoulder.  she likes the way his scent fill the water around them.  “i will keep the offspring safe too.”  

she jerks her head up.  that is why this is happening, isn’t it?  that it is her time to mate, and he has won her favor?  

he tightens his grip around her and rubs his face to the side of hers, and the way his shell rubs against her exposed sends a strange sensation through her.  “you first, though,” he whispers, “you until you have a shell again, until you can protect yourself again.  then i will stay with you as long as you wish.”  his gaze is so very sincere, and she could swim in those deep, dark eyes.  “you don’t have to be alone again.”  

and the way he says it makes her wonder…

she reaches up to touch his face, and he trembles under her skin.  “neither do you,” she whispers, and they give themselves to one another.


	81. do you know how soft you are?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for @ever-so-reylo
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: pegging, anal sex, neck hiding

ben sighs when her fingers push into him, lube slicked and gentle.  he tilts his hips a little and his fingers tighten on the bedspread underneath him.  

“you’re so soft like this,” she whispers.  “do you know how soft you are?”

his eyes flutter open and he looks down at her lazily.  _yes, i know_ , she sees in those eyes.  because of course he does.  he’d been the one to teach her what he likes, had played with his own ass long before he’d ever met rey, touching himself to feel a little less alone, a little less unloveable.   _it’s better with you,_  he had confessed to her after her first fumbling attempt to find his prostate, his voice breathy and weak from his orgasm.  he’d melted into the bed and had run his hands over her back until he’d started snoring and she had been almost entirely sure that he’d meant it.

“i love the way you give way,” she whispers, turning her hand slightly, circling along that muscle, feeling it clench around her fingers even as she pushes him a little wider.  “you know how that feels, don’t you?  feeling you accept me?”

 _you’re not alone,_ he’d whispered to her even as she’d never felt more alone in her life.  his words had engulfed her, warmed her, and though he had been sitting just out of reach, she’d felt as though he had wrapped his arms around her, was tucking her under his chin, was holding her, was loving her.

“rey,” he draws her name out as she adds another finger.  his eyes are closed again now, and he is worrying at his lower lip, his hands clutching his knees which are tucked up closer to his chest to allow rey better access as she continues to widen him, to prepare him.  she nudges at his prostate and he makes a noise, low in his chest, that sends a wave of want through her.  

“ben,” she whispers back, nudging his prostate again.  “you’re so beautiful, you know?”

he opens his eyes again blearily as she nudges at his prostate and his lips part in another sigh.  she runs the hand not pleasuring him up his thigh, then to his stomach to rest over his beating heart.  “i love you,” she whispers, even more quietly, and his breath hitches and his cock twitches, long and hard and red on his stomach.  

“rey,” he moans again, and rey bends her head and presses her lips to his shaft as she brushes her fingers once again against his prostate.  he cries out and precum dribbles out of the tip of his cock to land on his stomach.  she leans forward and licks it from his skin, tasting that familiar flavor that is ben–tangy and bitter but somehow, to her tongue, the sweetest thing she’s known.

she withdraws her fingers from his ass and reaches for the plug on the bed.  they’d decided a plug for this–a plug first, and if that went well, maybe next time a vibrator.  but only if the plug wasn’t too much.  _i want too much,_ ben had told her, his breath hitching before he’d pulled her lips to his.  

but what ben wanted and what ben needed were two different things, and so rey had had her way in the end.  she lubes up the plug and eases it into him until it’s snug, its handle poking neatly out for her to pull on later on when he was spent and boneless.  she pulls his knees back down so that his ass is closer to the bed and the mattress will push the handle in deeper in time with what’s about to come.  

then she climbs onto him, straddling his waist, easing his cock between her legs so that she can drip over him now.  her chest brushes against his, and he’s already sweating, smelling so deliciously like ben and the moisture of his skin drags at hers.  delicious friction against her nipples draws more slick from her cunt as she rubs herself along his shaft, his chest, her lips brushing at his as he rocks his hips against hers.  

with every motion, she sees his face twitch.  up off the mattress, and his cock is closer to her, closer to the wet warm and satiation; back down to the mattress and the plug presses his prostate and more precum dribbles out of the tip of his penis.   

“i’m not ready,” she whispers to him.  “will you help me?”

immediately his hands dip down to her dripping cunt.  he slips two fingers into her for just a moment, enough to bring out her own wet before he brings his fingers to her ass and begins to circle at the muscle there.  and now it is rey’s turn to moan slightly at the pressure he’s putting there, to rock her hips back onto his hand as she drips more and more onto his own leaking cock.  now, it is rey’s turn to give way to his fingers as he spreads her wide and ready for him, to whimper when he reaches for the little bottle of lube and adds more to his fingers.  

and now it’s rey’s turn to bite at her lip as his fingers leave her ass and grab at his dripping cock, pumping her juices and his along the shaft before pressing into her with a groaned, “fuck, rey.”

rey sits back on his cock, sitting up slightly to better press his ass down to the bed and she watches as his face contorts in pleasure at the way she feels around him and the way the plug feels inside him.  his chest is shaking, and his eyes are closed how and when rey begins to move, he feels warm and gentle inside her.

he keeps whimpering, his face twisting between her ass and the plug.  she leans forward to kiss his neck, to kiss his lips, and his arms snap around her, holding her so tightly as he fucks into her a little more quickly now.  he buries his face into her neck and keeps it there as pushes her hips back to meet his, spreading her legs a little wider over him so to try and get friction for her clit.  

she’s dripping onto his skin, onto the dark hair at the base of his cock, onto herself and her legs and the faster they press into one another, dripping stops being the right word.  drip implies that it’s periodic, that there’s a pause.  gushing feels more right as her slick coats his stomach.

his face is still buried in the crook of her neck and his breathing is shaky and rey knows–knows because she knows him, even if she didn’t know from how his rhythm has turned erratic–that he’s close.  she slides her own hand down between them and pinches her clit between her thumb and forefinger, rolling it until she’s crying out and crunching towards him. heat floods out of her cunt as she comes apart, and ben groans into her neck and warmth fills her ass as well.

he holds her for a little while longer, still nestled into her neck.  at some point he shifts his hips and his cock–starting to grow limp–begins to slide out of her.  he reaches down and tugs the plug out of his ass and tosses it onto the towel underneath him.  then he rests his hands on her rear, massaging it gently.  

“you’re incredible,” he mumbles into her neck.

then he brings his thumb down the crack of her ass, and finds her clit again.


	82. punctual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @prideandpreyjudice
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: modern au

he always arrives at exactly the same time every day, depositing his bookbag at the same table, setting down his coffee mug, and tugging out a sleek black laptop.  when it started getting chilly outside, there was an added step of shrugging out of his jacket before he sits down, opens the laptop, and begins to type.

rey doesn’t know what it is about him that catches her attention while she’s preparing books for reshelving.  there are tons of people who come into the library every day, who make habits out of chairs by the window, or always sit at the same computer if they can help it, who get settled for several hours of work and focus.

but it’s not that he always sits in the same place (though he does) it’s that he always comes at the same time.  academics can frequently be fluid with their schedules, but at 9:07am (early for anyone on a university campus) there he is with his mug of coffee, his laptop, and a surly expression that relaxes once the caffeine kicks in and he’s gotten some of his work out of the way.

it’s calmingly consistent.  it’s reliable.  rey knows that he’ll be there, every day, doing what ever it is that he is doing.  maybe that’s why she takes it personally when lanai mutters about him drinking coffee (“this is a _library”)_ under her breath; maybe that’s why when the chair he sits in usually breaks under an afternoon patron, rey replaces it with one of the best in the building; maybe that’s why when he _does_  approach the desk to ask after a book, her breath catches in her throat and her voice gets all high pitched though she usually speaks in her lower register.

after that, there’s a new habit.

he arrives at 9:07, sets down his mug, takes out his laptop, shrugs out of his coat, and glances at the desk and nods to her–every day, without fail, at 9:08.


	83. lucky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promtped by @beautyandtheren
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon divergence

ben hates canto bight, and the only comfort he takes in it is that the only person who hates it more than him is his mother, who is smiling and drinking with donors as they take a break from their time at the tables.   _even leia organa of the unfailing principles must bend her knees to the crushing weight of money,_ ben thinks with a savage bitterness.  his mother, champion for freedom and democracy, is still beholden to campaign finance regulation of the republic.  which means rubbing shoulders with people who are trying to buy her.

though why she dragged him here, he does not know.  probably because it looks good–the senator and her son.  or maybe she thinks he’s still eight and enamored with the people who design ships.  as if he hasn’t found hundreds of ways to improve their designs all on his own.

he wends his way over to the bar, knowing full well that there his mother will be very annoyed at him.  but how else is he supposed to tolerate this many insipid people at once?  that was why he hadn’t wanted to go into politics at all.  what’s the point of trying to get people to like you when they’re really just trying to take advantage of you anyway?

the bartender pours him a glass of golden wine and he drinks it.  outside, the falthirs are running their rounds, shaking the building.  he glances down at his chrono.  his mother could be here all night if she wanted to be–and if it meant securing donors for her campaign she would be.

“i don’t suppose you have any bigger glasses than this?” he asks the bartender as he finishes the wine.

“only ones that aren’t designed for human hands,” the bartender replies, and ben looks up.  he hadn’t noticed her at first–hadn’t even noticed that she was a _she,_ much less a human she.  her brown hair is tied back neatly into a bun and she’s wearing the black and white uniform of the support staff of the casino, and she has a rather spectacular dusting of freckles across her nose.  

“lucky me,” he says after a moment, realizing that it’s his turn to speak and he’s still staring at her.

“probably better to just sit here and drink than keep testing your luck on the tables,” the bartender replies easily, filling his glass with more wine.  “or have you already lost everything?”

ben drinks from the glass–more slowly this time.  he knows bartenders, knows it’s their job to be sociable, to be warm and friendly to patrons.  he will pay, later, for her kindness, tipping her heavily before he goes off wherever he goes next–an odd exchange.  

“no,” he says.  “i haven’t lost everything.”  

“lucky you,” the bartender says and there’s something to her voice that gives him pause.  

“and what have you lost?”  he shouldn’t ask that question.  is mother would slap him across the arm, but he doesn’t want to be here and her eyes are enthralling.

“what haven’t i lost?” she replies before realizing what she’d said and twisting her lips in a wry smile.  “can you lose what you never had?”

“only if you’re very, very lucky,” ben tells her.  

“we’re a dangerous pair, then,” she tells him, clearly trying to lighten the conversation.  “so very lucky–both of us.”

“ben,” he says, holding his hand out.

she smiles a determined smile as she shakes it.  “rey,” she replies.  

and ben–more than he’d expected when he had first set foot in this casino–feels very, very lucky.


	84. heartbeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @faequeentitania
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon compliant/divergent

“will you sit still for a moment?” her voice is so faint, her lips are chapped, her eyes fevered and ben could scream, he really could.  

“will you let me heal you?”

“you can’t heal,” rey mumbles, her hand reaching towards the wound in his chest.  he’s bleeding.  it hurts.  but rey’s heart is pattering inconsistently, a caged butterfly in her ribs that’s growing weaker and weaker and weaker.

“i _can_ ,” he growls, reaching out with the force.   _control, control, you must learn control, ben,_ his uncle had told chided.  as if luke skywalker had ever mastered it.  ben, though–ben will.  he will for rey, he will, she can’t–

“sit still,” she tells him, and her hand is on his chest now.  her skin is cold and clammy against his wound, but he feels hot all over.  that butterfly in her ribs is winging too fast now–not from adrenaline but from exertion.

“stop it,” he grabs her wrist.  “please.  let me heal you first.  i’ll last a little bit longer.”

“so will i.”

“ _you can’t hear your heart, rey._ ”

“and you can’t smell your blood,” she snaps back at him.  but her voice is almost lifeless it’s so tired, and her eyes are glazed over and her breathing is shaky.  “if you sit still, i won’t have to move, i won’t get dizzy or faint or–”

_die._

“please rey,” he’s panicking now.  panicking because her heartbeat is the only thing he can hear right now and he’s clinging onto the thud of it like it’s his own.   _it is his own._

“ben.”  does she hear how weak her voice sounds?  does she hear the sound of her failing lungs?

and then there is silence.

how long had ben longed for silence, nights when whispers filled his mind, or his parents arguments rocked their home? 

he can’t bear it now.

his whole body starts to tremble every single particle in his skin and blood going frantinc with the force he is raw untamed power he never had control he couldn’t have control not even for rey rey who has more control in her left pinky than he has rey who thought she could control her own death while she healed him and now and now and now his skin is crackling snoke used to send lighting at him when he failed and he doens’t think he deserved that anymore but he deserves this now he deserves nothing but pain he let her die he let her die in his arms how could he think he had enough control to heal how could he think he was good for anything except lightning across his skin painful and punishing and 

rey gasps, her eyes jerk open her heart beating strong and ben’s eyes go wide with surprise.

but no–no he doesn’t have time for surprise right now.

“will you sit still,” he growls at her and he takes a deep breath.  his own heart is thudding, her heart is thudding and he doesn’t know how much longer it will be before it is a butterfly again.  

“ben?” she sounds frightened–frightened because she knows what just happened and knows it might happen again.

“let me heal you.  please.”  he rests a hand over her heart.  the moment he touches her, static shock sends a jolt from her to him.  

“then will you let me heal you?”

ben growls.  rey laughs.  he sets to work.


	85. beautiful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @slagginbitch
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: domestic fluff

rey comes into the house covered in dirt and sweat.  she has forgotten just how brutal the sun can get in warmer seasons.  it’s not like jakku, where the heat is is so endless that you grow used to being burned alive.  this is deceptive heat.  gentle heat, until you’re in it for too long, and you’re working hard, and the water is for the plants, not for you.

she has cut flowers from the garden and places them in a vase that she’d made out of an old bottle of corellian whiskey, slicing the neck off the thing with her lightsaber so that she could fit the flowers into it properly.  she arranges them and puts them on the counter, where they glow yellow and pink and purple and blue in the middle of a room that is largely colorless.

“beautiful,” she hears ben say as he wraps an arm around her waist and his lips find her ears.

“the whole garden is blooming.  come see.”  she tugs at his hand.

“i meant you,” he whispers.  “but the flowers are good too.”

rey rolls her eyes.  “i’m covered in dirt and sweat.”

ben gives her a wet kiss on the neck, sucking her skin between his lips.  “beautiful,” he mumbles into her pulse.

“you’re being ridiculous,” she tells him, because he is.  she’ll accept compliments to her beauty–might even believe them–whispered beneath the starlight, when she’s clean, or when she’s flushed and sweating from him.

but ben remains adament as he continues kissing her neck and his hands begin to trail towards the seam of her leg.  “beautiful,” he keeps whispering, and rey sighs because he might be being ridiculous, but the flowers are, indeed, beautiful.


	86. fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @lady-cheeky
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: post canon

red and blue and purple light up the sky, but ben can’t look anywhere but at rey’s face.

as a boy, he’d loved fireworks.  what little boy wouldn’t–bright patterns that popped across the sky and filled him with delight.  they always ended too quickly.  (“mama are there going to be more?” but it was always time for bed.)  

he doesn’t look at the fireworks tonight though.  they are celebrating him, of course.  his fall (or his rise?  never has he felt more ascendant than he feels now), the first order rendered disorderly and headless (bodyless–snoke’s bisected corpse had been the end of the first order in truth), and autonomy returned to the galaxy.  

those bright explosions in the sky–they’re for him, but they’re mostly for rey, who squeals with delight at each one.  her face goes bright–blue, purple, red as it had in the snow on star killer base, flashing with the light of their entwined lightsabers.  now she doesn’t grunt and growl with rage.  now she doesn’t try to slash death into his face.  now she turns her head to him and there are fireworks in her eyes when she looks at him, not knowing what to say.

it’s not the look from the forest, and his heart swells.  it’s not the look from their earlier visions, or the look from crait.  it’s not even the look from the throne room when she’d understood his treachery in her name, when she’d seen that she was not, could never, would never be his enemy.

it’s something wholly different from any of those looks, but the color splashing across her face is far too familiar.  she licks her lips, and her gaze drops to his and a moment later she’s standing on her tip-toes and kissing him.


	87. chocolate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @thewayofthetrashcompactor
> 
> rating: m  
> tags: modern au

he can’t tell if it’s weird.  it is, weird, right?  to notice when your girlfriend is running low on tampons because she keeps the box by the toilet.  you’re not supposed to check in there, but he’d just noticed, she leaves it out in the open.  and it’s weirder still because you know she’ll need more soon because her period is pretty regular and you might have stuck it in your google calendar because it’d suck to make plans that aren’t period-conducive when she’s on her period.  not that there’s a problem with making plans for when she’s on her period.  but it’s good to be aware.  if there’s one thing he thinks (he thinks?) he knows, it’s that no one wants to be caught unawares by periods.

 _no man should ever feel embarrassed buying tampons, got that kid?_ his father had told him firmly when he was twelve and they were picking up tampons for his mom.  ben had turned bright red, but his dad had refused to be embarrassed by the cashier ringing up the box that clearly neither han nor ben solo would need.

so when he’s picking up more dental floss at cvs, he makes his way to the feminine hygiene aisle, finds the pink–but sporty!!–box that he’s seen in his apartment now for the past six months ever since rey moved in and grabs the regular size because once he’d read over the entire box and learned a lot more about toxic shock syndrome than he’d ever wanted when he was taking a dump and had left his phone in the bedroom.  

he also grabs some more deodorant because rey likes to use his (“it’s nice–smelling like you”) and he runs through it more quickly now before making his way to the self-check out at the front of the store.  

there’s a bit of a line and so he pulls out his phone and checks his messages.  rey is on her way back from a yoga class she’s taking with rose, and his mother had texted, wanting to check in with him about how his new therapist is going.  ( _fine, mom.  i’m having to rehash snoke now for the twelfth time.  something that never gets old.)_

his eyes fall on a box of hershey bars by the check out.

rey likes chocolate, especially when she’s on her period, which according to his google calendar will be starting tomorrow.  he picks up three bars and adds them to his basket before checking out and heading home.

rey is home already when he lets himself into the apartment and he can hear her in the shower.   he deposits the cvs bag on the couch and knocks on the door to the bathroom.

“yoga ok?” he asks her.

“my abs are sore,” rey complains over the sound of the shower.

“that’s saying something.”  rey has very good abs.  she has a six pack.  he will never be over it–not ever.

“yeah.  trust rose to find the single hardest yoga class.  join me?”

he does, and kisses his way across her stomach, joking that he’ll kiss away the soreness in her muscles.  he washes her hair for her because she always gets this delighted look on her face when he massages her scalp, and then he fingers her until she’s gasping into his shoulder, her hand pumping lazily on his cock until his vision whites out and he’s left with nothing but the taste of her on his lips.

he puts on pajamas and begins cooking them dinner and a few minutes later, rey pokes her head around the door of the kitchen, looking unexpectedly shy considering what they’d just done in the shower and that at this point, neither of them has a secret left that the other doesn’t know.

“you got me chocolate?” she asks as though unsure if she’d guessed right about the contents of the bag and their proximity to the sporty regular tampons he’d got for her.  

“you like chocolate,” he tells her as he stirs the vegetables in the pan.  casual.  he’s trying to sound casual.  he’s just trying to be considerate, after all.  he doesn’t need a reward for trying to be a decent human being.  

all the same, though, his heart swells with the expression on his face and a moment later she’s wrapping her arms around him, kissing him between his shoulder blades and for once in his life, he doesn’t feel like the biggest fuck-up in the world.


	88. birthday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @ilittlealicestuff
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: modern au

“look, i don’t want to do anything for my birthday,” rey insists.  

“nothing?”

“yes.  nothing.”

“is this one of your neuroses about–”

“what’s the point of celebrating my birth if my parents literally abandoned me?”

“i’d say it’s a testament to your tenacity, but screw me for trying i guess.”

she elbows him and he elbows her right back.

“but fine.  nothing for your birthday.  i won’t even give you shit about it apart from right now.”

“thanks.  the best birthday present of them all.”

* * *

rey’s birthday dawns as any other day does.  it’s hot for april, and they have kicked off their blankets in the middle of the night.  in the winter, rey will burrow her way into ben’s side, seeking the warmth of him beneath the comforter–today she wakes up alone, sweating, and already miserable from three days of unpacking boxes in their new house.

she gets up, makes coffee, does the daily sudoku puzzle her app sends her all while standing naked in the kitchen.  twenty minutes later, ben grumbles his way awake, having his coffee before going and getting dressed.

it is an average day–apart from the fact that they have far too much work ahead of them in terms of continuing to unpack and organize and condense and merge two people’s houses worth of stuff into one.  “you’re a fucking hoarder is what you are,” ben had grumbled after four hours yesterday.  they aren’t even halfway through rey’s stuff, but they’re mostly done with ben’s.  yes, she is a fucking hoarder.  it comes from never knowing when she’ll need that again, and thus not wanting to throw it away.

“home depot today?” ben asks.

“yeah,” rey sighs.  there’s a bunch of little gizmos and gadgets they need to pick up.  she gets dressed, and meets ben in the car and off they go.  

ben parks near the entrance to the garden center and, because rey always likes the smell of dirt, and greenery, she drags him through.  almost at once, a smile spreads across her face.  “look,” she sighs happily, walking towards a line of happily bobbing daffodils.  

she reaches over and runs her fingeres over the petals of the flowers, and looks up at ben.  “we haven’t talked about gardens yet.”

“do you know how to garden?” he asks her dryly.  he knows she comes from the desert, knows that she had grown up on a dump, knows that she _likes_  plants, but has trouble keeping them alive.

“no, but i’ll learn.  i’ll want to learn.  now that i have one.”

“can i help you folks?” asks a salesman, smelling their indecision and pouncing.

“yes,” ben says, and his hand goes to the small of her back.  “we’ve never had a garden before, but we thought we’d get one started.”

rey beams up at him.

* * *

they spend most of the day covered in dirt and sweat, the hot sun beating down on them.  but by the time it’s over, rey has several rows of flowers under her windows–yellow and pink and blue, and more that won’t blossom for a while because, as the salesman had suggested, it’s nice to have bloomers that happen over different parts of the spring and summer.

rey’s arms and back are sore, and when they finally make it inside to shower, they both stand under the water wordlessly for a good ten minutes before rey looks up at him, eyes shining and says, “this was the best birthday.”

“good.”  he bends down and brushes his lips against her forehead.

“you planned that, didn’t you?”

“oh yeah.”

“well.  thanks.”  she pauses before wrapping her arms around him.  “i love you,” she mumbles into his chest.

“happy birthday,” he kisses into her hair.


	89. return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by @cancelsavecall
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: modern au

_come back!_

the nightmares plague her all through the night.  her bed is empty without him and rey’s heart lurches.  

 _it’s just a business trip,_ she tells herself as she tosses and turns and buries her face in his pillow, hoping the vestigial scent of him will calm her. _it’s just a business trip.  he’ll be back._

she checks the find-my-friends app on her phone.  ben’s made it to the hotel in san francisco.  she wants to text him, ask him how the flight was, but if he’s asleep and doesn’t see the text she knows she’ll start to cry.

* * *

“i have…abandonment issues,” rey had mumbled to him after he’d gone away for a weekend with his parents.  she’d filled the whole weekend with friends–board games with finn and rose, a long run with bb–so as not to think about the fact that he was gone.  he has parent stuff, he’d been candid about it in a way that rey hadn’t been.  spending time with his parents to rebuild is important, and practically mandated by his therapist.  

“i’m not going to abandon you,” ben whispers into her hair.  “not ever.”

“you can’t know that,” she whispers back.  

“yes i can.”

she had wanted to believe him.  she had needed to believe him.

* * *

he texts her in the morning.

_jet lag is the worst._

she smiles at her phone and begins typing at once.

_flight ok?_

_yeah.  a little turbulent at the end._

_how are you?_

she stares at the words.  she thinks of the truthful answer _i hate this i couldn’t sleep last night i miss you._ instead, she types, _ok._

_just ok?_

_better now._

_i’ll be back on friday._

_i know._

then,

_i love you.  i’m not staying in this dumb city one second longer than i have to.  i’m too east coast for california to be in any way appealing.  especially since you’re not here._

* * *

“i miss you already,” he kisses into her lips the first time he goes away on business.  there’s a lyft outside waiting to take him off to the airport and rey just clings to him.

“come back,” she whispers.

“always,” he promises.

“i love you.”  she needs to say it before he goes.  he needs to know.  he needs to.  if he knows it, then he’ll know and if san francisco is better than here because she’s not there well…well…

he kisses her again, and brushes his thumbs across her cheeks.  “i love you too.  more than anything.”

* * *

she stares at the little dot on her phone, watching as his lyft takes him onto route two, then off again, then down pine, then up lake, then left on main street and right off hubbard and she pelts to the door and goes and stands out on the little patch of green in front of their duplex.  the sun is setting and it looks like it’s going to rain which sends a hazy reddish-purple glow across the sky.

a blue prius pulls up, ben hops out on the street side an grabs his bag from the popped trunk.  then he turns to rey, his long legs taking him to her in three strides and pulling her into his arms.  he squeezes her so tightly that he crushes the air right out of her and the only thing she can do is breathe him in as she presses her face into his chest.

“you’re back,” she tells herself.

“yup.  i’m back.”  he kisses the top of her head.  “i told you.  i’ll always come back.”

they stand there in front of their apartment until the rain begins.


	90. instinct

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for @aionimica's birthday!
> 
> rating: g  
> tags: canon divergence

the shots fill the square and instinct kicks in.  “ _he’s strong with the force,”_ the emperor had told his mother after he’d been born.  “ _give him to lord vader–he will be better for it.”_ his mother, like his grandmother, had always had a habit of refusing the emperor.  but that doesn’t stop instinct.

blasts freeze in the air around him, and he hears panaka shout, “senator! get down!” 

and he ducks down behind the transport he’d just disembarked, hand on his blaster.  

he hears a hum, sees a flash of blue.  the blasts ricochet backward towards the shooters, and when silence falls, the blue disappears amidst the smoke.

the person who had swung the lightsaber stands in the center of the square, breathing hard. 

then, she runs.

ben’s always run on instinct.  “ _you and your father both_ ,” his mother had sighed too many times.  and instinct sends him to his feet, jumping on the back of one of the shooters’ speeders and racing after the girl who is now on the back of a speeder of her own.

* * *

she’s got a pilot’s instincts.

this doesn’t surprise him.

instinct, his father calls it every time.  his father doesn’t believe in fairy stories.  “ _should have gone into the academy like me, kid.  you’d be a high officer by now.”_  his father chalks it up to luck and good reflexes.  ben’s seen him navigate through asteroid fields that should have destroyed his ship.  

he wonders, sometimes, if his father knows what his mother is up to, the dream she had born forth from her mother, and which ben now carries in his breast–the end of empire. _“but you mustn’t even let yourself think it like that, ben, because the emperor.  he’ll know.”_

_jedi._

that’s the only thing he can think to think of her.  she’s got a blue lightsaber and a dark cloak to hide her, and she’s got reflexes that are as good as his.   _do you know my uncle?_

* * *

she tries to lose him.

tries very cleverly.  if ben were anyone else, she’d have succeeded.  but his instinct tells him what she’s going to do as she does it.

“stop!” he calls out to her.  “you won’t outrun me.  i want to talk to you.”

she doesn’t stop, so ben reaches for his blaster and aims it–not at her back, but at one of the rear transmitters of her speeder.

he fires.

he doesn’t have to watch as he tucks his blaster away to know the shot was true and a moment later he pulls up next to the smoking, exploded shell of the speeder.  she had lept from it, catlike, and is now running on foot.  ben sighs and follows her more slowly now.

“who are you?” he asks.

“i’m nobody,” she tells him.

“no one’s nobody.”

“nobody compared to you, senator.”

“my father’s people were nobody, jedi.” her eyes go wide but that’s the only acknowledgement she makes of the word.  “you’re not nobody.”

“i’m not a jedi,” she says automatically.  

“oh yeah?” ben asks.  he reaches for the lightsaber at her belt and immediately the force envelops his hand, tugging it back towards her.

“that’s mine,” she says.

“like i said.  jedi.”

“there are no more jedi.  lord vader destroyed them all in the emperor’s wisdom.”

“funny thing you’ve got a lightsaber.  where’d you get it.  did luke skywalker give it to you?”

“no.”  a lie.  he can feel it.

“you know skywalker.  you’ve trained with him.”

“i haven’t,” she protests.

ben pauses.  her eyes are blazing, determined.

“you know who i am,” he says.

“senator,” she agrees.  no, agrees is a weak word.  spits.

“take me to him.  take me to my uncle.”

“i’ll die first.”  there it is, the concession.  

“you think i want to kill him?” ben asks quietly.

“or bring him to your beloved _emperor.”_ yes, she’s definitely spitting now.  “why else would you come running after me?”

“why’d you save my life then?”

she doesn’t reply.  poor foolish girl.  poor foolish jedi.  “you’re wrong,” he tells her quietly and he dismounts the speeder and towers over her.  the only good thing about his height is that he can tower over people.  even lord vader is shorter than him.  “the emperor isn’t beloved to me, and i don’t want to kill skywalker.”  it’s treason, saying this.  but she’s more likely to be caught and killed for it than him.  and there’s something trustworthy about her, his instinct tells him.  “i want to learn from him too.”

and with a flick of the force, the lightsaber sails into his hand.

* * *

if he’d thought to overpower her with that trick he had vastly overestimated.

it’s clear that if he’s got raw strength with the force, it is just that–raw.  the jedi is a jedi.  she is trained, and her control is more than ben even knows what to do with as she rips the saber back from him, ignites it, and holds it to his throat.  

“going to assassinate me?” he asks, bemused.

“don’t tempt me,” she mutters.  she’s watching him closely.  

then he feels it again.

it’s not the first time he’s felt someone pressing into his mind.  the emperor, vader–they’ll do it casually whenever you enter their presence.  a precaution, he’s been told.  too many attempts to kill the emperor, even if no weapons are allowed near him.  but never like this.

their touch is dark, heavy, and it always makes him feel like his nose is about to bleed.

her touch is lighter, softer, and it leaves a trace–her name.

“rey.”

her eyes snap to his.  

“ben,” she replies evenly.  then she sighs.  “i’ve got a bad feeling about this.”  then she disengages the lightsaber.  “come on.”

* * *

her ship is a tiny thing, and the second seat of it doesn’t have good leg room at all.  ben can tell that he’s going to be cramped and grumpy by the time they get wherever they’re going.

“so are you really a jedi?” he asks her when they’ve broken out of atmosphere.

“don’t you have senate meetings you’re missing?” she demands.

“yeah,” he shrugs.  “they’re useless anyway.  not like anything happens without the emperor’s will.  it’s all for show.”

he can tell she hadn’t expected that answer.  “shouldn’t you be trying to convince me that–”

“i’m here, aren’t i?  are you really a jedi?”

“yes,” she says.  “i suppose so.  it’s not like it was before order sixty-six, though.”

“it’d have to be different,” ben replies, tilting his head back against the headrest.  “but you’re a jedi knight?”

“yes,” she replies.  

“did you make your own lightsaber?”

“i’m working on it now,” rey says.  “this is–this is master luke’s.  it was his father’s before his.”  

 _anakin skywalker._ it had seemed small in ben’s hand.  he’d never known his grandfather.  his grandmother hadn’t spoken of him.  the memory of him hurt her, his mother told him.  she mourned her husband too deeply to mention him.

“how does it feel–holding the lightsaber of a legend?”

“how do you know i’m not the legend?” she asks.  “i’m the jedi, after all.  all jedi are legends in the face of empire.”

“you said you were nobody about an hour ago.  now you’re a legend?”

“you’ve got a smart mouth on you,” she retorts.

“i come by it naturally,” he responds, his lips twisting in a smile that he knows makes him look like his father.

_look at me, dad.  i’m going off to fall in love with the stars, just like you said i should._

* * *

when they’re in hyperspace he starts to pepper her with questions.  where was she from? (jakku.) how long had she trained with luke? (since she was six.  her junk trader parents had sold her to the wandering jedi for drinking money.) what was her favorite part of being a jedi? (helping people.)  how many jedi were there? (not many.  but more and more every year.)

she doesn’t ask him a single question. 

“nothing you want to know about me?”

“i expect most of your answers to be too polished and political,” she responds.

“what’s that supposed to mean?”

“are you going to give me a straight answer?”

“as straight as i can make it.”

“what was it like growing up with a family?”

ben swallows.  

he breathes.

slowly, he says, “i love my parents, but i had no choice in who i got to be.  they–they do what they have to do.”   _my mother rebels against the empire,_ he does not say. “and i’m part of that.  i always had to be part of that.  to carry the torch onward.”

“and you didn’t want to?”

 _i want to be part of the rebellion._ “nothing happens in the imperial senate.”   _just not like this._

“if your mother is luke skywalker’s sister, why didn’t she send you to him.”

“didn’t want to put a price on my head, i expect.  ben solo, son of leia amidala, daughter of padme amidala is safer than ben solo, nephew of luke skywalker, son of anakin.  there.  that’s what it’s like growing up with a family.  you don’t get to be yourself.  you’re one of many.”

“i’m one with the force,” she says.  “and am thus one with many.”

“are you?”

“yes.”

“because you wouldn’t have asked if you really felt like you were one with them.  you’re lonely, aren’t you.”

she doesn’t reply.  there.  that’s it.  the truth.

“it’s a lonely life, being a jedi?” he asks her.

“yes.  are you sure you want it?”

“did you want it?”

“i didn’t have a choice,” rey whispers.  “they sold me for drinking money.”

“anakin skywalker was born a slave too.”

“i’m not a slave.”

“you were sold like one.”

“stop it,” rey insists.

“stop what?”

“it.  just stop it.”

they fall silent, and do not speak again for another hour.  when they do speak, ben asks, “do you want to be a jedi?”

“i told you to–”

“i mean now.  not then.  do you want to be a jedi?”

“i want to give people hope.”

“there are more ways to do that than being a jedi.”

“i know,” she snaps.  “but it’s the path that i’m on.”

“a lonely one.”

“has anyone ever told you you’re _really_  annoying?”

“yes.”

“the loneliness is less important than the hope i give.”

“but it’s not making you less miserable.”

“i’m not miserable.”  he hears how small her voice is.  he can’t see her face, but he knows she hears it too.

“yes you are,” he tells her.  then, slowly, thinking back on committee hearing after committee hearing after committee hearing… “i was too.  you’re not alone.”

she doesn’t say a word.

she doesn’t say a word, but he feels it–a rush of warmth flowing out of her and through the force.  

his breath catches in his throat.

he hears hers do the same.


	91. confusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt
> 
> rating: t  
> tags: modern au

> {[insp.](https://galacticprideandprejudice.tumblr.com/post/174259399722/lawlu-minssery-ask-bot-whats-the-most)}

rey is three weeks into her new job when she sees jess giving her a weird look after she comes back from a quick coffee break.

“something wrong?” she asks.

“no,” jess says breathily.  “it’s nothing.”

“ok!” rey says, a little too cheerily.  she’s still new, and she doesn’t really know people here.  under any other circumstances, she’d be a ball of anxiety right now.  but she’s not.  

“you’re doing good work so far,” ben had said in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and looking at her so gently.  

“you don’t even work with my team,” she mumbles.

“yeah, but i heard dameron talking about how you’d asked a good question in a meeting and the man may drive me nuts but that’s good praise coming from him.  you’re doing good work so far.”

he’d smiled down at her; she’d smiled up at him.

having ben in the office with her makes all of the difference in the world.

* * *

she doesn’t see him regularly.  

this is good.  

this is what they’d said would mean she _could_  apply for the job at the company he’d been at for nearly three years.  they need enough space so that they don’t get tired of one another, but passing one another in the hallways between meetings–that’s good.  that’s just right.  

she likes the experience of his eyes flicking towards her as he’s walking with colleagues, clearly deep in conversation.  she’s seen him smirk as he passes conference rooms she’s in and she ends up watching him until he’s out of her range of vision.  she likes knowing that if she’s having a bad day, she can open up slack and send him a note and it’ll look like she’s having a work conversation while she’s in a meeting, rather than like she’s blatantly texting her husband.

having ben around is a good thing.

it should be–that’s why she married him.

* * *

“solo’s married, you know.”  

it’s finn who tells her after she comes back from another coffee break.  she and ben grab coffee at the same time every day.  a quick check in, a smile, touching base about dinner.

rey blinks at him.  “i–”

“look, i don’t want to be an asshole, but i care about you rey.  and people are starting to talk.”

“starting to talk?” rey stares at finn.  she knows that ben’s married.  _she’s married to him._ but do people in the office really not know that she’s his wife?

“yeah.  and some of it’s gossip, and people who can’t keep themselves to themselves, but the way he looks at you–i don’t know.  it just seems… he’s married is all.  just be careful, ok?”

it’s not until finn’s gone that it even occurs to her to say, _yeah.  to me._

* * *

 _rjohnson: apparently i’m “the other woman.”  
_ _bsolo: i don’t follow  
_ _rjohnson: finn just warned me that you’re married  
_ _bsolo: hell yeah i’m married  
rjohnson:  _and people are starting to talk_  
_ _bsolo: this wouldn’t be happening if you’d taken my last name_  
rjohnson: listen it’s been two years and it’s not happening  
bsolo: i’m just saying  
bsolo: although this explains some of the looks i’ve been getting  
rjohnson: ?  
bsolo: i usually get looks because i’m an asshole and people don’t like me.  
bsolo: but these are new ones.  these ones look like i stepped on a kitten or something  
rjohnson: like you’re considering cheating on your wife with the new girl?  
bsolo: they need to mind their own business  
bsolo: i’m not cheating on you with you  
bsolo: this isn’t even something i’m tempted to roleplay  
rjohnson: you know hr has access to these chatlogs, right?  
bsolo: what are they going to do? i’m not behaving inappropriately towards you.  at least hr knows we’re married.  
rjohnson: i don’t much fancy hr having insight into our sex life  
bsolo: you mean you don’t want them knowing about roleplaying  
rjohnson: BEN  
bsolo: and other items of a certain variety that you might have bought with your first paycheck  
rjohnson: STOP  
bsolo: love you  
bsolo: not cheating on you with you  
bsolo: am tempted to just keep doing what we’re doing so they can look like total idiots when they realize you’re my wife  
rjohnson: that feels cruel  
bsolo: they’re the ones calling you a homewrecker.  has any of them even commented on the fact that you’ve got rings too?  it’s just because i’ve been around for longer and that’s bullshit.  they deserve to look like fools.  
rjohnson: we should just tell them the truth  
bsolo: suit yourself  
bsolo: i need to get to my meeting and i’ll have to pay attention  
rjohnson: love you

* * *

she tries to tell jessika after coffee with ben.  she does try.  except that right after her, “about me and ben,” she sees jess’ eyes harden slightly and she stops short.

ben’s been in therapy for anger management for years now, and he jokes that rey’s temper is quite as intense as his, though she has better control.  “you know what?” rey says, “never mind.”

* * *

“i saw her holding his hand this weekend.  they were down on market street,” she hears jess tell snap.

“it’s wild.  what would anyone see in _solo_.  i still can’t believe he’s married.”

“she’s married too.  did you see the rock on her finger?  it’s gorgeous.  her poor husband.”

yes, her poor husband, rey thinks bitterly when she meets said poor husband in the car after work.  her very poor beleaguered husband, who gets the best blowjob of his goddamn life when they get home.  her poor ignorant husband, who cooks her dinner every night because she’d grown up hungry and he’d said in his marriage vows that he was never going to let that happen ever again.  her poor husband, whom she loves with all her heart.

* * *

 _bsolo: i’m telling dameron that you’re my wife_  
bsolo: we shouldn’t have let it go this far  
bsolo: it’s upsetting you and you’re doing the thing where you pretend you’re not upset because you don’t want to admit to yourself that you’re upset  
bsolo: and i hate it when that happens  
bsolo: so i’m telling dameron.  he gossips like a fishwife.  
bsolo: i love you  
bsolo: you being happy is more important than my spite in this regard

* * *

she gets the slack messages after she comes out of a meeting and jess can’t look at her.  she sees rey, turns bright red, and hurries away.

it’s weird, or so rey thinks until she looks down at her phone and sees the thread from ben.  she types out an _i love you_ too before heading back to her desk.

“you could have said something,” jess says from her desk down the row.

“i tried,” rey points out.  “you didn’t have to make assumptions.”

“sorry,” jess says.  and what’s more, she sounds like she means it.  rey gives her a half-smile.  

then she turns back to her computer and sets herself to work.

* * *

the strange looks stop after that.  finn apologizes for having tried to intervene.

“i should have said something,” rey tells him, “but i was too shocked and it was over so fast.”  he laughs, and shrugs and she can tell that it will be fine.  she starts to add her colleagues on facebook where they’ll see that her profile picture is several years old, and from her wedding day.

she continues to have coffee breaks with ben, and they share looks when they pass one another in the hallways.  she holds his hand while they wait for the elevator down to the first floor, and rose jokes about them needing to get a room while they wait.

“because holding hands is definitely something we need to get a room for,” rey laughs, squeezing ben’s hand tighter.

“everyone knows handholding leads to sex,” is rose’s immediate response.  

“something tells me hr would intervene if we booked conference rooms for hand holding, but if you think we should,” ben says, his voice trailing away suggestively.

“just get one that doesn’t have glass walls, please.  we don’t need a show,” dameron says as he arrives by the elevators.

“don’t need a show?” ben asks and he’s got a devious look in his eyes.  he leans forward and presses a kiss to rey’s forehead.  “that too risqué for you?  or should we save that for the room i apparently need to book?”

“hr.  hr.  they won’t stop being a couple in the workplace!” rose jokingly complains, and rey leans into ben’s arms. 

“uh, rey, don’t you know solo’s married?” finn says in a falsely dumb voice.

“yeah,” rey says.  “to me.”  and she kisses him.


	92. pretend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for @mnemehoshiko's birthday!
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: canon-compliant/divergent, subpreme leader

he turns the water on before he gets into the ‘fresher, letting steam fill the room, taking deep, shaking breaths.

one day, he’ll choke hux until the man’s dead.  one day, he’ll get actual competent generals who actually know what they’re talking about and aren’t just parroting to him what they learned while training under the empire.  one day–one day everything will be new, and fresh, and everything that’s old and broken will fall to the wayside and it will just be a bright future.

he gets into the ‘fresher.  the water is so hot it stings at his skin for a moment, but the sting is a good one.  soon he’ll be used to it and the heat will relax his muscles and he might, for a moment, be calm.

as if it knew what he wanted, his mind turns to rey.

_don’t think like that,_ he tells his mind.  but even the memory of her glaring at him has his heart going still, has the heat of the shower fade into nothing.

it’s been  _weeks_  since he’s seen her.  he’d known as soon as she’d discovered her powers on starkiller base that she’d be a quick study of them, but the sheer control that she has–enough to shut him out the moment his ears go numb, the moment he gets that telltale  _rey_  shiver across his skin–is, well.

well, he’s never been proud of anyone.  and he’s not her teacher.  but he’s proud of her.

proud of her.

his hand tightens at his side.

he wishes she had a little less control.  he wishes she were more like him, that her temper would burst out hot and wild rather than cold and controlled.

he wishes he could just capture a glimpse of her face–just for a moment.  even if she hates him.  even if she’s his enemy.  things make sense when she looks at him.  things make sense, and they don’t.

he closes his eyes, and there she is, just behind his eyelids and he sags back against the wall of the fresher.  she’s angry with him.  he knows that.  he understands why.  he even might deserve it.

“deserve,” rey whispers to him.  “there’s a lot you  _deserve_ , ben.”

even when it’s imagination talking to him and not her, his cock twitches when she says ben.  and just like that her–his–hand is around him, squeezing him tightly as her eyes burn.  “you think that you deserve me?” she whispers to him.  “what have you done to deserve me?”

ben swallows and he doesn’t dare open his eyes because then he’ll just see the empty ‘fresher, so instead he licks his lips because he can’t bring himself to say a word–not if someone walking by might hear it.

“silent today, are we, supreme leader?” she teases.  teases, because this rey–this rey isn’t real.  this rey can love him with abandon, and the fire in her eyes can be–“well, if you’re not going to use that mouth to answer me, i know what you can use it for.”

the hand around his cock squeezes lightly before releasing and the rey in his mind drops him to his knees.  he presses his tongue into her belly button, licks along the underside of her breast, nips at the soft skin there until she tilts herself forward slightly and he can draw her nipple into his mouth.  she lets out a sigh and he rakes fingers through his own hair, pretending they are hers.  hers would be more delicate than his, would luxuriate more in the sensation–at least when they were curled up together.  but now, this rey, who has the supreme leader on his knees in the ‘fresher… 

“you’re so beautiful when you’re on your knees, you know that?” she tells to him, tugging his hair.  he looks up at her.  

now, it is she who looks proud of him. 

he swallows, and brings his lips back to her stomach to suck a bruise there before kissing his way down through the soft brown curls above her sex to part her slit with his tongue.

she spreads her legs for him, her hands in his hair, and if his own hand comes to his cock–“you think you deserve that?” she asks and with a silent whine he returns his hand to his knee.  “you have to prove that you deserve me, supreme leader.  do you deserve me?”

_i want to,_ he thinks desperately as he buries his face between her thighs.  he’s never been with a woman, but he’s watched enough holos to get a sense for what she’d look like.  he can smell her sweat and something else there, something sweeter, something like the future he’d thought he’d seen with her when she’d touched his hand.  how gentle her touch had been, how trembling her breath.

her breath trembles now as he licks at her.  in his mind, he is not a novice.  in his mind, he has done this with her time and time again–only with her.  he has learned the workings of her pleasure, has studied earnestly and it is not long at all before she’s panting, her hands fisting tightly in his hair, her hips rocking against his face, murmuring senseless things about how good he feels, how he was made for this, for her, how she loves this, loves  _him._

he’s not even touching himself when he comes–not even touching her.  his mind goes blank, his body sags against the tile as his cock spills itself onto the wall of the fresher in front of him.

he opens his eyes and the light is too bright for him, harsh against the realities of his imagination.  he watches as his cum drips down the wall and down the drain.  he gets to his feet, his knees creaking.  they are the first thing to tell him how old he’s getting–too old for letting his imagination and yearning take him, naked, to his knees.  he shuts off the water, grabs a towel and runs it over his hair, over his chest, over his legs, over his groin.  

it’s as he is leaving the stall that he feels it again, that shiver, that pressure in his ears and he turns wildly, hoping to catch a glimpse of her, forgetting that he’s naked, forgetting what he’s just done.  he just wants to see her–with his own two eyes, see her, know that she’s safe that she’s–

he almost trips and falls as he stumbles backwards because rey is as naked as he is, her teeth worrying at her lips, two fingers pressed into her core as the other hand twists at her breasts.  his hands tighten on the sink next to him as he chokes back some word, some sound, he’s not sure what.  

it’s enough for her to hear him, though, and she opens her eyes–eyes that drink him in.  “ben?” she manages to say before her word turns into a moan and her legs start to tremble and ben steps forward to catch her.  because of course he does, of course he will.  she’s already had him on his knees without even knowing it.

she trembles, and wraps her arms–unconsciously, he is sure–around him, gasping and shuddering.  he can smell the scent of her cunt on her fingers, sweeter than anything he’d imagined.  he holds her until she’s gathered herself together, waiting for the sting when she realizes that she does hate him, that she hates what he’s doing, what he’s turned himself into, what he’s become–when her control comes back and flames fill her eyes again.

instead, she just leans her head against his for a moment, her eyes closed, and murmurs, “let me just pretend.  please.”

and he lets her.  because he’s pretending too.


	93. that's not how the force works

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i was whining the other day bc i keep writing virgin ben and it’s hard to write virgin sex and i’m like “DON’T YOU REMEMBER FROM THE LAST TIME I MADE YOU BONE REY???” and the answer is no because of canon
> 
> @ever-so-reylo: hahaha omg  
> i feel like all bens from all fics should merge consciousness and just…go down on her.   
> FOREVER.
> 
> rating: e  
> tags: idk man sin

he breathes.  he breathes as deeply as he can.  breathing.  is important.  it’s how he’s not going to lose it in like four seconds.

it’s also how he can make sure he doesn’t asphyxiate the moment that rey’s tunic falls to the ground and he sees her perfect beautiful soft round breasts for the first time.  breathing.  breathing is important.  it’s good.

he takes one breath, and then another.  calming breaths.  almost meditative ones.  in through the nose, out through the mouth.  that’s how his uncle had taught him to calm down.   ~~he doesn’t want to be thinking about his uncle right now.  he _really_  doesn’t want to be thinking about his uncle right now. ~~ 

“is this ok?” rey whispers, and ben takes another deep breath.  she takes a step towards him, her hand outstretched.  she rests it on his chest and begins to fiddle with the fastenings of his tunic.  “we don’t have to do this if you don’t want.  if it’s too much,” she murmurs.  “it’s not right if it’s not right for both of us.”

which is how he realizes that he still hasn’t said a thing, hasn’t moved.  he’s still focusing too much on breathing.  so he smiles, and covers her hand with his own, and bends to kiss her.  his whole body buzzes.  it does that every time she touches him, the force swirling from her to him and him to her and her to him, every time reminding him that he’s not alone.  every time reminding him how perfect she is, how he doesn’t deserve her.  

 _i want this to be good for you,_ he thinks.

 _it will be.  because i love you,_ she replies wordlessly, her lips still pressed firmly to his.  his hand squeezes around hers, and he breathes–breathes her in, in and out.  in and out, that buzzing growing stronger, and stronger with every breath and  _do you feel it the force ben? do you feel it? moving between living beings and–_

_–she is sitting on the floor, crying out as he works his tongue into her slit. roommates aren’t supposed to do this.  but here they are, and god she tastes so right, he could do this forever–_

_–forever the way that she’s looking at him right now in that white dress–damp from the rain they hadn’t had an umbrella and thank tim cook that phones are waterproof now, her nipples pink and poking through in color and texture and he groans and kneels down in front of her, pulling the cup of the sundress down and sucking her between his teeth and this is what heaven tastes like if he believed in heaven nothing has ever been as right as rain–_

_–rain in the mud and rey writhing underneath him, her hands gripping his hair so very tightly, little moans as he rocks his hips into her, little hissed “yessssss”es as he loses himself to feeling encompassed by her, drawn into her, home at last, even as his knights lie dead in the mud at their sides.  he’d never let them touch her.  he’d never let them hurt her.  to hurt her is to hurt himself and he’s done with that, done with that until he dies he might die just now buried inside her–_

_–her cunt is the most beautiful flower, not saccharine sweet but human and, more specifically, rey.  he could plant a garden of flowers that smell like her, would drink their nectar daily and die a happy man.  how is it that he is only now tasting her?  and will he ever stop? the sounds she’s making right now, he loves the sounds he loves–_

_–loves her.  he loves her.  he loves her.  the way she fits into his arms, the way she tucks under his chin, the way she holds him and his heart goes both slow and fast at once, the way the storms calm in his mind.  he can lose herself in her flesh and find himself there being the man he truly wants to be as he gasps and chokes and sobs and she gasps and chokes and sobs with him._

“ben?”

he has gone very, very still.  

his mind is full of her, full of him and her.  how many versions of the two of them?  how many times has he loved her, has he known her, has he tasted her, has he touched her.

the force pulses through him, and ben feels as though he has both aged thirty years and lost five or ten off his life.  

but perhaps most importantly, he doesn’t feel as though he’s about to lose it when he touches her.

so he does.  he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her too him and–

– _his arms hold her close to his chest as his fingers dip into her.  they stare at fireworks–_

his heart is racing because if there was one thing he was made for, one thing he has practiced, one thing the force has provided him with the skills and, apparently, training for, it’s loving rey to death and back.  he kisses her hard, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, not too deep, not so much that she’ll gag–

– _nervously staring across the bed at her.  how is he supposed to pretend to be her boyfriend when he’s more than a little in love with her?  is it worth it for this bed, the way his heart twists when she presses her lips to his?–_

and she makes a noise of surprise because she hadn’t been expecting it to feel that good, he can feel it in her.  pride swells in him.   _i can make you feel good._

_–i can have control for you–_

_i will make you feel good._

she shivers in his arms.  he picks her up and carries her over to the bunk.  

it’s a small bunk–not designed for more than one person, and not designed for someone as tall as him.  he doesn’t care about that though.  he tries to push thoughts of his father and mother curled up here–

– _rey’s body pressed against him, the escape pod they are in branded with_ property of han solo please return  _as they make their way through space and time and he’s never touched anyone like this never been touched like this–_

out of his mind as he settles rey down and kisses his way down her chest, sucking her nipples between his teeth, his hands tracing circles into her skin because he just wants to touch as much of her as he can, wants to love as much of her as he can.

“ben,” she moans again, her fingers weaving through his hair

– _she tugs at his hair as she cries out and nothing’s ever felt better he believes it that he’s safe–_

as she moans and presses her chest forward towards his searching lips.  he smiles into her skin as he makes his way down, licking between the crevices of her abdomenal muscles until he is looking up at her from just between her legs, needing to know that it’s ok.

she parts her legs and lies down and ben runs his fingers over the softest skin he’s ever touched, gleaming with her wet already and he leans forward and she tastes like–

– _varykino, with the birds chirping around them and the sun warming their skin.  peace, and quiet, and rey most importantly of all, lying back in the grass calling for him, calling for ben–_

_–ben loses himself to the taste of her, more even than the feeling of her mouth on his cock which he can feel through the force.  this is what they are, this is what they will always be, knowing peace through one another’s mouths even as they feel the other’s pleasure pounding in their hearts and it’s like a dream–_

_–a dream, this has to be a dream, he’s in the coatroom of his shul with his lips between her legs and thank fuck jews don’t believe in hell because he’d sure as hell be on that list for this–_

_–this is the closest he’s ever been to a woman’s…parts before, and he breathes shakily before looking up at her, feeling his cheeks and his ears go hot as he asks “can i kiss–it–you? can i–_

“i–” rey begins but whatever she’d been about to say gets cut off with a cry and he feels her muscles begin to flex under his tongue.  her juices gush across his lips and he drinks her down, moving his tongue from her sensitive clit to her slick slit as her fingers twist in the bedding and her gasps begin to steady.

then he begins again.

begins again, and tries to focus, tries to maintain himself because every single ben solo who has loved every single rey–they aren’t here and now, even if somehow, inexplicably, they are part of him now too.  he wants to be here for  _this_  moment, this rey, who is looking down at him blearily as she rubs her hands through his hair, her chest flushed and sweating from what he has done for her.  

he pauses in licking her and brings a finger up to run along her edges as he sits there, locking eyes with her.  “can i keep going?” he asks her.  “i want to.”   _is it too much._

_you’re never too much._

he groans and bends his head back down to her clit and flicks at it and her whole body jerks off the bed for a moment.   _she needs more time,_ he thinks idly, knowing that it’s true, relishing that he  _knows_  it’s true, down in his gut, down in every feeling he’s ever had.  

so he brings his tongue down to her opening and slips it in and this is heaven, this is everything, feeling her let him in, bury himself in her as he tastes her.  he nuzzles his nose into her hair as he curls his tongue up.  practiced strokes.  gentle, precise.  he’s never done this before, and yet he’s done it thousands of time, and every time is perfect but none is as perfect as right this very moment. no vivid shadow of some other rey will ever feel as right as  _this_  rey falling apart again on his tongue.

she’s gasping and he feels her hands tug at his collar and he pulls his face away from her and climbs up to hover over her.

“you’re still dressed,” she murmurs, hervoice dripping with contentment.  to think he’d been nervous.  it feels like a lifetime ago.

he tugs his shirt obligingly off and bends down to kiss her.  she rests her hands on his chest and sighs into his lips.  then she wraps her legs around his hips and reaches down between them and when she touches him everything goes still.  and when she guides him between her legs and pulls him into her, ben knows he’s not going to lose it in four seconds.  oh no.  no, he’s going to last for  _hours_.


	94. Chapter 94

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A belated birthday gift for jeeno2! 
> 
> Rating: T?  
> Tags: Canon divergence/compliant, bed sharing

the bunk is too small for rey, much less kylo, much less rey _and_  kylo, but the force seems to have its own ideas.

“can’t we just–make it stop?” rey grumbles angrily after his ears have gone all fuzzy.

“look, this isn’t ideal for me either,” he says.  it’s the weirdest experience.  he has a very large bed–he always has.  it comes from having the frame of a bantha and the demeanor of someone who really should have his way with things. so lying in his bed but having the distinct sensation that if he doesn’t bend his knees up his legs will go through the side of wherever rey’s bunk is is really a bizarre sensation.

“i’m trying to go to sleep,” rey snaps at him.

“so go to sleep,” he tells her.  “i’m not stopping you.”

she turns her back to him, punching her pillow so that it’s under her head and that, he assumes, is that.  she’ll go to sleep, the force will fade, and he’ll be just as alone as he ever has been.

he closes his own eyes again and tries to take deep breaths, to force his nervous system to calm down so that maybe in four hours when he has his first meeting, he’ll have gotten some paltry amount of rest.

rey starts to snore next to him.  kylo glances at her back.  she’d just fallen asleep.  those aren’t fake snores.  he hadn’t realized that she snored at all.  but there she is, next to him, snoring.

it’s an odd sensation, looking at her.  his heart still longs for her, and he wishes he could get it in hand, get it to have some modicum of control. but his heart has always done what it wants.  

his legs start to cramp.  he tries extending them, but even in his bed, he feels like they are hitting a wall.  he also has the distinct feeling that he’s about to fall out of his bed, despite the fact that it is both long and wide.  

 _she’s asleep,_ he thinks, more than a little annoyed.   _can’t it go away?_

it’s adding insult to injury–that she’s here and asleep, her back turned away from him even as the force forces them together.  why is it so determined to connect them?

_it was i that bridged your minds._

one final torture from snoke, then.  one more way he’d never know peace.

in his own frustration, he turns onto his side which he immediately regrets because rey is warm and tucks under his chin so neatly and his arm comes to rest around her waist and–

she elbows him hard and he recoils away.   _why_  does his tailbone hurt?  his stomach makes sense given her elbow, but his tailbone?  had he fallen out of her bunk while lying in his own bed?  

rey is still asleep, still snoring away.  worse–the little scavanger has tugged his blankets and cocooned herself in them, tugging them loose from the way they’d been neatly tucked under the mattress.  when he tries to pull them back around him, she kicks him, still sleeping.

now he’s really annoyed.  and more than a little bit cold.  his tailbone hurts, he still feels a bit winded and wouldn’t be surprised if there was a bruise beginning to bloom on his abdomen–not the worst injury he’s ever had, not even the worst that rey’s given him, but certainly the weirdest.

and there she is, snoring away, wrapped in blankets, warm, comfortable, happy…

his throat constricts.   _warm, comfortable, happy._

he’d seen her memories, freezing nights in the desert on jakku.  her wrappings and tunic kept some of the warmth in but it wasn’t enough–notthe same as the soft down of the blanket she’d now stolen from him.  no one to keep her safe, no one to keep her warm.

he doesn’t try to curl around her again, though his traitor heart bids him to.  he senses she’ll hit him again in her sleep–an unconscious habit she undoubtedly developed on jakku, where she had to be strong lest lesser creatures try to pick her off as weak and steal what little she had salvaged for herself.

 _you have compassion for her,_ snoke had accused him once.  had he connected them because of that compassion?  or had he thought it was kylo’s weakness, one more way for him to try and strengthen his apprentice.

rey farts.  loudly.  and if he hoped that maybe the smell of it wouldn’t cross the galaxy, he really shouldn’t be surprised that it does because her warmth had, the feeling of her fingertips against his had.  why not other sensations too?

she farts again and kylo closes his eyes and rubs his face and looks at his chrono because in all his childish imaginings of sharing a bed with rey, he’d never once imagined that she’d fart at him, steal his blankets, and elbow him in her sleep.  

it’s oddly endearing.

he doesn’t really understand why.

but he isn’t going to sleep–he knows that.  his legs are _really_  stiff now and his mind is far too alert and he is certainly not going to be able to calm it down.  he can get himself some caf and read through the remarkably tedious reports that hux sends his way and leave rey to her safe, warm sleep.  because god knows he won’t let anything happen to her while she’s in his bed.

as he sits up and makes to get out of the bed, rey makes a noise, quiet, plaintive, not at all like her snores.  

“rey?” he whispers.  is she dreaming?  is she having a nightmare.

she rolls over, her eyes still closed and her hand pokes out of his blanket cocoon reaching for him.  she finds his leg and immediately sighs and wriggles deeper into her blankets.

_she doesn’t want me to go._

he lies back down and this time, when he curls onto his side, she doesn’t elbow him. she tucks herself under his chin, burrows like he had as a boy when he’d had nightmares and had gone crying to his mother’s bed, pressing his face into the warmth of her because she wouldn’t let anything terrible happen to him.  he’d been wrong about that, but he’d believed it so firmly at the time.

carefully, he lets his arm go to wrap around her.  she doesn’t fight it off.  wherever her instincts are taking her in her sleep, now his arms are safe and not assailing. 

she is warm through the blankets, and kylo lies there, holding her, wondering what would happen if she woke up and found herself cradled in his arms like this, letting his mind imagine her waking up and smiling, and wanting to kiss him, to hold him back.

the next thing he knows the warmth is gone and his chrono is blasting loudly in his ear and his cock is rock hard.  rey is sitting up staring at him warily, still wrapped in his blankets and the flush on her cheeks makes him guess with a rush of horror that it wasn’t the alarm that had sent her flying from his arms.

she stares at him and he watches as the flush only grows deeper.  then, as if realizing what she’s doing, she begins trying to untangle herself from his blankets, freezing as she realizes that they’re his blankets and not hers, as comprehension dawns that she’d stolen his blankets in the night and he’d let her, that he’d held her in his arms when she’d been distressed that he’d leave her.

“kylo?” she asks slowly, staring at the blankets.

“yeah?”

but whatever she was going to say is lost when the blankets collapse, empty, and the air unmuffles around him.

“oh for crying out loud,” he mutters, getting out of his bed angrily, his cock bobbing in front of him as he makes his way to the fresher.

he’s going to take a long shower, even if it means he’s going to be late for his meeting.  he’s going to take as long a shower as he needs to let that look of dawning comprehension in her eyes fade into the swirl of memory.


	95. hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for rissanox

when he was a boy, his mother always brushed his hair for him, threading fingers through it.  his hair was darker than hers, but just as thick.  “where did this color come from?” she wondered aloud before making a noise as though she had missed a flight of steps.  when he saw pictures of his grandfather and grandmother, bail and breha organa had dark hair.  he assumed it came from them.

* * *

when he trained with luke, he cut his hair short.  it got in his eyes, and as he reached puberty, it was greasy all the time which made his pimply skin worse.  “you don’t need to do that,” his uncle told him, because one of the many traditions he revised from the old jedi order was the need for padawan learners to crop their hair and grow a long braid.  his uncle missed the purpose, though, and it was nice to keep his hair out of his face when he trained with his sparring saber.

* * *

it was laziness that made him grow his hair out.  he grew tired of cutting it, even if he didn’t have to hold the scissors, even if he could do it with the force while he read, even if he could make a droid do it for him.  that seemed all too much effort for hair and the only person he knew who put effort into his hair was his mother.  “we’ll talk soon,” she always told him before closing the comlink, but they never talked soon.  only that voice in his dreams came regularly, listened to him, highlighted for him that however much he cared about his parents and his uncle, they would never care about him in the way they promised they did.

* * *

his hair sticks out from under his helmet.  he catches an errant thought from hux,  _it looks ridiculous,_  as he passes him.  but he has never bowed to anyone’s will and if it bothers hux so much that seems as good a reason as any to let it grow even longer.

* * *

rey brushes her fingers through his hair, playing with it as he falls asleep.  he can feel little emotions rolling off her as she does it–indistinct spots of _soft_  and _joy_  and _love._ she cards it into little lumps that she ties into place and he grunts at her, opening a bleary eye.  

“am i going to look ridiculous when i wake up?” he asks her.

“you’re going to look like me,” she tells him, her own three-part bun bouncing as she bobs her head to the side.

words he does not know how to say clog his throat and he closes his eyes again and lets her keep playing with his hair.  


	96. sharing a dessert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for misscoppelia

rey knows she loves him when she pushes the last bite of cheesecake over to him.  

she has eaten so much that she physically cannot finish it.  she would suck on it just for the flavor if it meant not having to swallow, but cheescake is not a lollipop or a jolly rancher.  if she puts it in her stomach, her stomach will hurt and in the past, she has suffered through that because she cannot bear to waste food–much less desert.  but she doesn’t have to waste it and she doesn’t have to eat it.

she knows she loves him because he had not balked at the sheer amount of food she had ordered–not once.  ben knows her hunger, understands her the fear she has not needed to act upon for years now that she doesn’t know where her next meal will come from.  he never criticizes her food choices, or makes any comments about how her appetite might affect her weight.  he always gives her part of his dessert, just so she can try it, just so she can experience it, because he always orders the best desserts and he knows that she has an unspoken goal of eating all the dessert she could not afford growing up.

she knows she loves him when her hand more than her head pushes the plate towards him.  and from the way he cannot look away from her, the way his hand shakes as he brings the last of the cheesecake to his mouth, she can tell he knows exactly what it means to her–and he feels it too.


	97. taking a bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for aionimica

“soap doesn’t work,” he hears her say as the door to the fresher opens and ben looks up from his datapad.  rey is dripping in a towel, and the water is still muddy.

“it does,” he says carefully.  “you aren’t scrubbing hard enough.”

“i shouldn’t have to scrub,” she replies.  “it should just work.” ben smiles at her and she glares at him.  “don’t be patronizing.”

“i’m not being patronizing,” he yelps at once.  

“there’s not enough water to begin to _scrub_  on jakku–your soap isn’t strong enough.”

“come on, then,” he says, putting the datapad aside and getting to his feet.  he takes her hand and tries not to let his smirk widen when the towel falls to the floor, a little browned from the muddied water it had absorbed from rey’s skin.

she settles into the tub again and stares at him, looking affronted.

“aren’t you getting in?” she asks.

“in that water?  no.”

she gives him a withering look that fades at once as he rolls up his sleeves and then he gets a better idea and tugs his shirt up over his head.  her gaze gets warm the way it always does when she sees his chest.  he’ll never forget that first time–not ever, when she’d struggled for words, for breath.

he grabs the washcloth and soaps it up and kneels down in the tub next to rey the way his mother had when he’d been so tiny he barely remembers it at all.  then he begins to scrub–behind her ears, under her arms, lathering her skin and rubbing until it’s pink and raw and fresh.  

“that feels nice,” rey tells him, her eyes drooping as he raises an arm to get at her shoulders a little better.

“yeah?”

“yeah,” she replies.  “my muscles–they’re–” she tries to find a word but he just smiles because he knows.  he can feel it too–the way she’s relaxing, the way his hands digging into her skin eases tension in her muscles she hadn’t even known she had.  through the force, he can feel her heart slow, can feel her breathing grow deeper.  she’s starting to fall asleep.

he keeps scrubbing and her head falls slideways.  she isn’t quite asleep but her eyes are closed and she lets out little contented hums that only get lower in her throat as he pushes her gently forward to rub at her back.

when she’s clean he fetches her a fresh towel and helps her to her feet.  

“scrubbing,” he whispers into her hair as he holds her for just a moment.  some of the wet from the muddy water is getting on his bare chest, but he doesn’t care about that now, not when she’s practically glowing with contentment in his arms.

“hmmm,” she hums, “i may need you to show me again at some point.”

“oh yeah?”

“i need a teacher.”

he snorts, and kisses her.


	98. Chapter 98

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating: e  
> tags: mutual handjobs
> 
> inspired by some [lilithsaur art](https://twitter.com/lilithsaur/status/1073040179831681025) but also the need for more handjob fics in honor of the handholding in tlj.

is it her hand, or his--the one that wraps around him, the one that makes his heart stutter like he's seeing a future in which he's  _happy_  for the first time in his life?

is it his hand, or hers--the one that slides inside of her, finding the heart of her that she's been so fierce to protect ever since it became clear to her that no one would do it if she didn't?

their breath mingles together, hers and his, his and hers, as their hands work.  she knows what he likes--does she intuit it? does she feel the way his heart is in his throat? sometimes he thinks he feels her sadness twined with his--it would then make sense that she might know his own knowledge of his body.

her grip is firm, but not tight.  it is soft, but not weak.  her hands are calloused but the texture of them coated with with the sweat on her palms is enough to make his eyes roll into the back of his head as he slides another finger inside her and curls his fingers up.  

she must know.  she must know how to touch him, they must have shared that much. how else would he know to curl his fingers as he strokes her, how else would he know just how much pressure to add to make her legs tremble, to make her breath come out in uneven puffs until her head rolls forward to press against his chest, against his heart.

is it her pleasure, or his--that rolls over him as she gushes over his fingers and lets out a choked sob, all the deeper because she's not alone, she can feel that she's not alone, he will be here with her, always?

is it his heart, or hers--that is full to bursting as his mind goes blank and his vision grows bright and he understands, at last, what it means to want to protect the light?


	99. Chapter 99

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jeeno is a monster who prompted the image below and i had dumb elmo-related headcanons already.
> 
> so here's a dumb fic about muppet underwear.
> 
> rated M for i don't know how this happened to Me.

i.

the first piece of context is a photo that rey finds in leia's house the first time that ben takes her home for the holidays.  it's rosh hashannah, and the house is bigger than rey thought real people lived in and she can't  _help_ but poke around as leia fusses downstairs about how long ben's hair has gotten, and does he get enough to eat he looks so thin, and for god's sake han please save the rye for after services.

the picture is in leia's study.  there are a lot of pictures there, hanging on the wall.  pictures of leia's and han's wedding--both of them look so young!--pictures of leia and luke hugging, pictures of ben as a plump-faced baby whose dark eyes looked so very somber.

and a picture of ben in elmo pajamas, holding an elmo doll.

"elmo?" she asks him later as they're curled up together in his bed.  he goes stiff.

"oh no," he says.

"oh yes."

 

ii.

the second piece of context is that rey likes to eat everything.

she's not a picky eater.  she'd never had the opportunity to be picky, growing up as hungry as she did.  picky is a luxury for people like ben, who is possibly the pickiest eater she's ever met in her life.  

but rey goes mad for cookies.  she just loves them.  

for the first birthday that they live together, ben makes her a cookie cake and rey literally cries tears of joy at the sight of it.  

whenever she's had a good day, a bad day, a mediocre day, she can be trusted to pick up cookies on her way home.

once ben even found her half asleep, open mouth snoring with some cookies still half-eaten in her mouth.  he found it both gross and endearing and still hasn't stopped making fun of her for it.

 

i - again.

"he was so fond of tickle me, elmo," leia tells rey.

"mom."

"he was.  he almost cried when his doll broke and han had to figure out how to fix it in the middle of the night while ben was wailing.  luckily he's better at fixing dolls than cars."

"do you like being tickled?" rey asks, teasingly as she looks at ben.  she reaches her hands out to goose him and he immediately goes red and grabs her wrist.

"he's very ticklish."

" _mom."_

 

ii - again.

"i want to learn how to bake cookies," rey tells him.

"no," he replies.

"why?  i'm not  _that_ bad a cook."

"no, but you'll be denying me the joy of pulling fresh cookies out of the oven and seeing you look like that gif of the cookie monster."

"what gif of the cookie monster?"

"that gif--you know--where he's being given a cookie that's like twice the size of his head?"

"you're making this up."

"i'm not."

"you're a muppet lover making this up."

"i'm not, and if i'm a muppet lover what does that make you, my little cookie monster?"

 

iii.

she has to say--she likes tickling him.  

she likes it because his cheeks go bright red--"elmo colored," she teases as he's wheezing for air.  she likes it more because the way he looks when he's smiling--well.  she loves his face.  she really does.  she loves it best when he's smiling and bright eyed and sure, she can just suck his dick to make that happen, but there's something about hearing him  _laugh_ that makes her want to tickle him constantly.  

 

iv.

she sends him a photo while she's shopping at target.

_they don't make them in men's sizes but i'm getting the largest size for you._

he doesn't respond immediately, but he does in the end.

_you realize that you pulling my dick out of elmo boxers is going to ruin an unadulteratedly pure childhood experience forever, right?_

rey grins.

_yes._

_ok just wanted to make sure you knew._

he doesn't complain again, though.  well he does, but mostly that the waistband is a little too tight, but they snip the elastic a little bit and then rey blows him to within an inch of his life and when she's done, he's bright red, and smiling, and she tickles his chest lightly to make him laugh.

 

v.

she likes him in his elmo boxers.  

she thinks they make his butt look cute.  in multiple senses of the word.

which motivates him to wear them.

which motivates her to do wicked, wicked things with her tongue and fingers.

 

iv - again.

ben could return the favor in kind.  he has seen cookie monster underwear at target too, with the words  _om nom nom nom om nom nom_ written in the elastic. 

but he decides to save it for a rainy day.  because really it's ridiculous.  

muppet underwear.

what has capitalism wrought?

 

vi.

the rainy day comes when he's looking for bras on etsy.

why he's on etsy looking for bras--well he wanted to get something artsy.  he loves giving rey pretty things.  she gets all dewy-eyed and gentle whenever he gives her something delicate.

and he doesn't want to be that pervy boyfriend--the one who gives lingerie for a birthday because that's secretly a gift for him as much as her--but then again, he hadn't expected to find cookie monster bras on etsy.  

they're quite nice, too.  a soft blue lace, a spot of sheer where the nipples are--presumably to emulate a cookie, based on the kind of weird addition of googly eyes along the neckline.  he has to get them for her.  he has to.

 

vii.

rey's eyes get dewy the second she opens the presents.  a pair of cotton  _om nom nom cookies_ panties and the fanciest bra she probably owns--but one that is cookie monster themed.

she looks up at him, half-laughing, half-accusing.  his eyebrows twitch.

 

viii.

"i look ridiculous," rey says as she comes out of the bedroom.  ben has to admit, there's a bit of a texture clash between the cookie monster underwear and the fancier etsy bra.  but he can't care.  because her tits look marvelous, blue always makes her skin glow, and the pale spots in the middle of the bra cup line up perfectly with her nipples.

"you look perfect," he replies.  he's only in his boxers--his elmo boxers.  he's not a fool or a monster.  rey pauses as she takes him in, her eyes dripping ove his chest, along his abs to settle on his groin, which is stiffening the longer that he looks at her tits in that bra.  it's such a ridiculous bra.  but her tits are so marvelous.  "get over here."

she does, straddling his hips and rubbing herself against his semi while he sucks on her nipples through the lace of the bra.  "question," she purrs at him as she runs her fingers through his hair.  "if you're the one eating my cookies, doesn't that make  _you_ the cookie monster?"

he looks up at her.  he wonders, briefly, if his eyes are famed in her gaze between the dumb googly eyes on the bra.  he hopes they are.  the thought makes him smile.  "no," he says.  "i'm the one with the elmo underwear, remember?"

"and yet you're the one who's eating cookies right now."

"this is the worst dirty talk we've ever done."

she throws her head back and laughs and he loves watching her laugh.  she never laughs enough.  or smiles.  she has the most beautiful smile.

"i'll eat your cookies," he continues and she giggles.  "i'm sure," he pulls a voice, "elmo loves cookies." 

" _don't!_ " rey shrieks with laughter.

"but that doesn't make elmo the cookie monster.  not even close.  thank you for sharing your cookies with elmo."

"you're right, this is the worst dirty talk."

"you're the one who wanted to ruin the purity of muppets," ben reminds her, lifting his hips slightly underneath her to remind her of the boxer shorts.  

"shut up and eat my cookies."

he does.  he's never been more pleased with a command, and it's not long before he's taken off the ridiculous bra and is tugging the cookie monster underpants down her legs to settle his lips between her thighs.  if he weren't lost in the taste of her, if he weren't lost in the way she's sighing on the couch, the way she's got her hands in her hair, how soft her slit is against his tongue, he's sure that he could think of several cookie monster jokes for the situation, just to make her laugh.  but he'll save that for later.  for now, c  _isn't_ for cookie, and he loves rey's more than words, more than anything else in this whole world.


	100. you belong with me

She looks like a dream, but then again she's always looked like a dream.  That's part of the problem.

Ben remembers going to call his Freshman fall and Taylor Swift on the radio, singing about  _Ca_ _n't you see that I'm the one that understands you..._

He shouldn't be thinking about this right now.  He shouldn't be thinking about any of this right now.  He's standing behind his mother, who for once in her life isn't wearing makeup.  Her hair is perfect, but she hasn't done anything to her skin and it makes her look old.  His dad hadn't looked old when they'd gone to identify him in the morgue.  He'd looked oddly young.  And small.  Ben always is shocked by how small his dad is.

He holds his mother's hand as he turns his attention back to the casket.  The rabbi is saying some words--words that would undoubtedly make his father roll his eyes because his father believed that all religion was mumbo jumbo, even when the rabbi had been strictly instructed to keep discussions of god out of it.  

Ben's not paying attention.  His attention span has been...weird lately.  His counselor tells him it's grief.  Ben's not sure.  Sometimes he feels like he's been grieving his whole life without anything to grieve for.  Now he has something and he can't even focus.  His eyes drift across the crowd again.  Mostly his mom's friends, and his dad's.  He hadn't really had friends growing up which is why it's strange that Rey is...

She doesn't look good in black.  Everyone's supposed to look good in black, but it makes her look sickly somehow.  Or maybe she's sick.  She senses him looking at her and her gaze leaves the simple casket to meet his and his mouth goes dry.  Her eyes are a bit bloodshot from tears but the red makes the green in her hazel pop out more.  

_Been here all along so why can't you see...._

He shouldn't have Taylor Swift stuck in his head at his dad's funeral.

- 

"Ben, you remember Rey?" his mother asks as he approaches.

"Yeah--bio, right?" Ben says.  Bio, and history, and also gym class, but bio was the one where they'd been lab partners once.  Making out under the bleachers at games, holding hands in the library, cutting class to go on long walks around the park, talking about everything and nothing, not wanting to tell his parents because--he can't remember why.  He should have told them.  Dad would have liked Rey.

"Right," she says.  If it were any other day, he imagines that the words coming from her lips would have been cooler, but instead they're quiet.  

"Rey's been working for your father for the past year," his mother tells him.  "She's been holding everything together since he--"

"It's nothing," she says to Leia firmly.

"It's not nothing.  I should be helping you more.  I'd have been doing it already, except he's always been adamant about keeping me away from--"

"I can help," Ben says and they both look at him.

"You can--" his mother begins, her eyes going bright with tears.

"Yeah.  I should. I should have."  

How many arguments had he had about not wanting to do with either of their professions, about wanting to be his own person, about not wanting the weight of the world weighing down on him all the damn time and what did he get for it, really?  Does he really even feel like his own man?

"That's--that would be lovely," Rey says, and she's looking away from him, out across the room.

She excuses herself a few minutes later and Ben finds her in the kitchen, pouring herself more wine.

"You don't have to," Rey tells him.  "You don't--I don't need help."

"And if I want to?" Ben asks her quietly.

"Why do you want to, Ben?" she asks him and it's like the night she shut her door in his face, the night it ended.  

"Because my dad died and I don't know what I want anymore."  It's the truth.  It's always the truth for Rey.  "And I know I fucked us up a long time ago."

Rey crosses her arms over her chest.  "That was ten years ago, Ben.  We're different people."

"So we should be able to work together, right?  No big deal?" Rey takes a slow breath.

"Yeah, fine.  No big deal."

She picks up her wine glass and makes her way towards the doorway to the kitchen and Ben calls after her, "Rey?"  She pauses, but doesn't look back at him.  "I should have told my parents.  I don't know why I didn't.  I'm sorry."

Her back goes stiff, and she looks at him just long enough for him to see the tears in her eyes.  Then she's gone.  

-

"Why did you say it?" Rey asks.  He's sitting in his back yard, looking at all the fallen leaves he's going to have to rake up since his mom never does the yard work and his dad's dead.  

"Say what?"

"What you just said.  About how you should have told your parents."

Ben looks up at her.  She's still holding her wine glass, but it's empty.  Her eyes are still shiny, but they're a glassy shiny from too much drink and not so much from tears.  

"Ben."

"Because it's the truth," he says.  "I'm sorry, and I should have told them.  You weren't something to be ashamed of."

"You were ashamed of me?" she demands angrily.

"I was scared that they'd break it," he replies.  "My parents."

"Your parents are wonderful," Rey snaps.

"Yes.  I know.  Everyone loves them so much and when I was a kid that was hard, ok?  Or have you forgotten."

And she goes still.  Because she hasn't forgotten.  She remembers.  

"Yeah," she says.  "Yeah, I remember.  That's why I was surprised when you--you offered to help, and when you said..."

She sits down on the bench next to him.  

Then she takes a deep breath.

"I miss you sometimes," she says.  "Your dad--he reminded me of you when you were happy."

"I was happy?"

"Sometimes.  Before the end, you were."  She takes a deep breath.  "Are you happy now?"

"I don't know," he replies quietly.  "But it's good to see you.  I don't know if that counts."

"It's good to see you too."  

And she takes his hand, and for a moment he feels like he's sixteen and wild again and he wants to pull her into his arms and kiss her.  And then the impulse fades and he squeezes her hand instead.

She squeezes back.


	101. Pajamas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt on curiouscat

Rey steals his flannel.

He wouldn't be annoyed by this, ordinarily. It's adorable, and far too big for her. He likes the way she looks in his clothes. He likes that she gets cold easily and snuggles into him as though he's a furnace.

But it's like two degrees today and that's a little cold, even for him, and she keeps steeling his flannel pajamas.

"I'll keep you warm," she promises him. "I'll be your blanket."

Which is fine, except in the middle of the night, she tends to roll off him because she likes to sleep on her side. Worst of all: she is also a blanket thief so he ends up shivering and awake and pajamaless, blanketless, girlfriendless as she burrows into a nest of down and cotton.

So he takes matters into his own hands and a few nights later, when Rey gets home, she finds him sprawled on their couch, scrolling through his phone in his flannel pajamas.

"So you want me to freeze?" she teases as she hangs up her coat. "I see how it is. Well, two can play at that game, and I'm stealing your hoodie."

She goes into the bedroom and he hears her footsteps stop. He smiles at his phone.

She comes back out of the room, holding the plastic bag in her hands. "You got me pajamas?"

"They're still my size so you can still have the same effect," he says. He knows how much she likes it, feeling small in his oversized hoodies and his oversized flannel.

"Do you want these? And I'll take yours?" she asks softly.

"You don't want the new ones?"

Rey shakes her head. "I don't need you. And those ones make me think of you."

Ben blinks. His eyes are oddly stingy. "We're disgusting," he says. "Utterly disgusting."

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes, I'll take the new ones."

"All right, off with them," Rey says and the soft smile on her face turns a little devious, and Ben grins at her and begins unbuttoning the top.


	102. "And if I offered you my hand again, would you say yes?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt on curiouscat

"You're asking me this now?"

"Just answer the question."

"We don't have time for this."

"I might not have time for anything. Just tell me."

He's dripping blood--that wound may well be the end of him if they don't get him to the med ship any time soon. Rey's trying not to think about what will happen if the medics refuse to care for Kylo Ren. She's trying so very hard not to think about what will happen if all his blood leaves his body and she's left with just another ghost of someone who was supposed to love her.

"Ben, please," she says softly. His weight seems to get heavier on her shoulder, his footsteps seem to stutter.

"You wouldn't," he says softly. Then, as though putting on a brave face, "I understand."

"Ben, that's not it," she protests at once and there are tears in her eyes again. "Ben, if you die and I say it out loud I don't know what I'll..." She's shaking now. Shaking and tired. So tired. She's so tired of everything just--can't things ever go the way they're supposed to.

"So I won't die," he tells her.

"Because that's something you have control over while all this blood is leaving your body," she snaps. There are tears mixing with sweat on her face now. She doesn't want to be crying. She doesn't want to be afraid. But somehow, she's both of those things, and she's soldiering on, like she always does.

"If I don't die, will you answer the question?" he asks her.

For a moment, all she can hear is their footsteps, his ragged breathing, her own beating heart.

"If you don't die. Don't die."

Is she imagining it, or is he pressing his face against her hair, pulling her closer? As if he's not already so close, leaning on her the way he is. Is she imagining the way his breath is coming out in trembling gusts before he straightens again and continues on, determined not to die?


	103. Ikea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> curiouscat prompt from ever-so-reylo

"This is what the big surprise was?" Rey asks him dryly as they take the escalators upstairs. "Ikea?"   
  
"Have you ever been to Ikea?"   
  
"No."   
  
"So shut up."   
  
"That's a nice thing to say to the birthday girl," Rey says, rolling her eyes at him. Ben swats her bottom playfully.   
  
"And you're the one who keeps saying you don't like birthdays, that you don't want to do anything special. So here we are, going to Ikea because we really need a new coffee table, a new dresser, and a shelving unit for you to put all your tools in."   
  
"Do I get a cupcake at least?" she grumbles.   
  
"No, but there are Swedish meatballs." And Rey's ears perk up.   
  
They reach the top of the escalator and go straight into the little cafeteria. Rey orders enough food for an army and Ben gets some coffee and watches her eat, trying to keep his expression more bemused than emotional. There's something wonderful about watching Rey eat. She hadn't had enough to eat growing up. "This is good," she tells him, her mouth full. "For the meatballs alone, this trip is worth it."   
  
"And you haven't even seen the furniture yet," he says, trying to keep his tone dry.   
  
She finishes, they bus her tray, and they make their way through the superstore. They argue over lighting fixtures and chairs and--no, no, we don't need this but it would fit in that corner by the window. Ben gets distracted by a desk that would actually work really well in the dining room without taking up too much space, but Rey refuses to budge because he's eyeballing it and they have no idea if it actually will take up too much space because they don't have the measurements of the place he wants to put it. "It'll probably just be too big and then we'll be stuck having to move everything around to make it fit," she points out, a little too logically for Ben's taste. He jots down the desk's dimensions and its item number, though, because if it does fit, he absolutely plans to order it online.   
  
They compare and contrast shelves, they test out chairs and couches that they don't need just because they want to, they load up on housing supplies they hadn't realized they were without but, upon seeing them, need.   
  
And then they get to the warehouse and Rey freezes. "What's this?" she asks him as he keeps going to the computer kiosk to locate the items they'd decided to get.   
  
"We need to pick up our furniture," he says, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. Because coming to Ikea with Rey was always going to be wonderful, but coming to Ikea with Rey on her birthday that she hates because her shitbag parents didn't love her enough and not warning her that she gets to put all the furniture together when they get home...   
  
Her eyes go very, very bright. She takes a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling, her chest expanding. "Oh," is all she says.   
  
She wraps her arms around him while he looks up the different furniture pieces.   
  
"Happy birthday, sweetheart," he murmurs to her, kissing the top of her head.


	104. Porker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted on curiouscat by nuanceismyjam/walkingsaladshooter

"Kittens?" Ben asks, pointing towards the room where they're playing. That was the plan, kittens. But Rey gets a little starry-eyed around all cats, and so naturally, she'd gotten distracted in the very first room they'd come through.

Sitting on her lap is a very fat, very fluffy cat with a flat face and bright blue eyes. Rey is stroking it gently from behind the ears down to its swishy tail. "This one's called Porker," she says, and Ben can't decide if it's rude to snort because the cat is certainly fat enough to be called Porker. Because Rey's got him caring about whether he's rude to cats, even in his mind these days. Times really have changed. "He's been here for over a year. Someone found him abandoned behind that bar on Thirteenth Street. The one that got shut down." She keeps stroking Porker's fur and Ben knows exactly where Rey's mind is right now. He knows because she's got that glazed, distant look in her eyes.

He crouches down next to her and Porker and holds out his fingers for the cat to smell. Porker sniffs, then lets Ben scritch him under the chin. He's purring.

"They just left him," she whispers.

"That's why he needs a good home," Ben says.

"He's quiet. Not a yowler. I asked," Rey says. "I know he's not a kitten but--"

"But he's been waiting a long time for someone to come back for him," Ben says softly, and Rey blinks back tears. He kisses her, she kisses him back, and between them, Porker purrs.


	105. Chapter 105

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> curiouscat prompt from lightshinebright

"Easy does it."  His hands are on her waist and he's walking right next to her.  "I've got you."  
  
"You won't let me fall." She doesn't ask it because she knows it's the truth.  Ben won't let her fall.  But her stomach still twists uncomfortably every time the balance gets off.  
  
"I won't let you fall," he repeats after her, sturdy, supportive.  "But you won't need me soon enough.  Once you're moving faster, the speed will keep you balanced."  
  
"What if it doesn't?" Rey asks.  
  
"That's why you're wearing a helmet."  His hand leaves her waist to knock on the bright green plastic helmet they'd got at the bike shop.  Rey's going to paint pink flowers on it, later.  Or maybe some dark green ivy pattern.  She hasn't decided yet.  
  
"Ready to go faster?" Ben asks her.  They're near the top of the hill now and it's not a steep hill by any means, but it's still a hill.    
  
Rey looks up at him.  "I'm not going to fall?"  
  
"Little kids can do this.  You definitely can."  
  
"What if I fall?"  
  
"Then I'll make fun of you for the rest of your life."  
  
Rey looks back down the sidewalk.  She tightens her hands on the handlebars.  
  
"Remember, if you have to break, both of them at once," Ben says and nods to the handle breaks.  "You don't want to flip over."  
  
And Rey kicks off and it's not long before the wheels are spinning faster than she can pedal.  The wind is in her eyes, soliciting stinging tears, and she can feel it rustling gently through the hair under her armpits and on her legs.  But she doesn't fall over.  She feels pristinely balanced on the two thin wheels and when the hill levels out she lets out a whoop because the speed keeps on going and she still feels balanced.  Gently, she turns the handlebar and it's positively graceful, the way the bike turns to face Ben.  
  
He's biking down the hill after her.  There's no helmet on his head, and his dark hair is billowing a little bit and he's grinning at her as she cycles in a circle, waiting for him.  He joins her in the circle, his legs pumping lazily at the pedals.  
  
"You got it?" he asks her.  
  
"Easy as riding a bike," Rey grins.  Then she straightens her bike out, pedaling gently.  The road ahead of them is long, but seems less so now that she can move fast.  "Let's go!"


	106. "love you, bye"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt on curiouscat

"Sir?"  
  
Everyone's staring at him and Ben's just sitting there, blinking.  No.  Not Ben.  Kylo.  Kylo's sitting there--Oh fucking fuck.  
  
Did he just end a threatening call to the Resistance, one where Rey was yelling at him, calling him a vile bastion of scum and villainy, with "Love you, bye"?  
  
He did do that, didn't he.  
  
He glances at Hux who is just gaping at him.  And the only thing to do right now is to be his father's son.  "Confusion tactics," he says gruffly as he gets to his feet, flipping his cloak over his shoulder in what he hopes is a convincingly confident way.  "Get in their heads."  
  
Sometimes, he wonders how his father ever managed to convince anyone of anything, because Ben--Kylo--has never been able to lie like that.  (In the back of his head, unhelpfully, he hears his mother's voice, telling him that Han Solo had, in fact, been terrible at exactly this.)  
  
"Let me know if they try to clarify the communication.  That's how we'll know we'll have--" but Rey's standing there, staring at him and the air around his ears is all muffled again.  Her eyes are bright, her mouth is slightly parted, and her breathing is a bit uneven.  "--succeeded."  
  
"Yes, Supreme Leader," Hux says but he sounds livid.  Kylo--Ben--doesn't care.  He makes his way, looking casually, he hopes, to the ship's windows and he senses the others leave through the Force.  There's no reflection of Rey in the glass, but he knows she's still there.  He can still hear her ragged breathing.  
  
"You can't just say that," she snaps at last, and his heart is in his throat.  Yes--this he remembers, Rey at his throat.  "That you love me?  That's--that's--Kylo--" He hates hearing the name Kylo from her lips.    
"Are you surprised?" he asks her.  "I offered you the galaxy."  
  
"I didn't want the galaxy, I wanted you," she snaps again. "You don't get to say you love me when--when--" She starts to stammer when he turns to face her, the tears in her eyes overflowing now and Ben extends his hand out towards her.    
  
"I love you," he tells her. "I have never lied to you and I never will.  I love you, Rey."  
  
She lets out a choked sob and for a moment, he thinks she'll spit more fury in his face.  But no, she takes a deep breath and begins to say, "Ben, I lo--" when the Force disconnects them.  
  
And Ben can't even begin to feel perplexed that Hux is probably going to use that little sign-off for a coup because somewhere, across the stars, Rey loves him.


	107. Chapter 107

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> modern au - nsfw, geriatric sex
> 
> anonymous prompt on curiouscat

"Wouldn't prescribe it," Ben grumbles as he shuffles through the door of their suite.  "Something about not wanting to give me a heart attack."

"I'd prefer you not have a heart attack," Rey points out.  She's sitting on the bed in the next room over and there's a glass of water on the bedside table.  She's listening to him closely as he shuffles his way through the living room.

"And I'd prefer an erection that lasts longer than thirty seconds.  I feel like I'm a teenager again."

"I feel like when we first got together," Rey teases.  Once, she might have planned to put on some fun underwear for him, expecting him back with a bottle of Viagra and a good few hours ahead of them.  But she doesn't really own any fun underwear anymore.  She'd settled instead for putting on one of Ben's shirts.  He always likes that, seeing her in his clothes, even after all these years.  "You never lasted longer than twenty seconds for the first few months we--"

"Yes, yes, I know," he says.  "I just--"  He stops short.  And he frowns.  "Rey," he begins slowly.  She pats the bed next to her.  "I'm not going to last, dear."

"Sometimes, it's not about you lasting, dear.  Now sit down, will you?"

He crosses to the bed--slower than he would have fifty years ago--and creaking like an antique, he sits down next to her at an almost glacial pace.  He's watching her carefully, his nostrils flared.  She's the one that's planned this, and fifty years of being together is enough to have taught both of them that if one of them has planned something, you let them have their moment.

"Lie down," she tells him and he does as Rey turns away from him and pops her dentures out, putting them in the glass of water for later.  

He frowns at her, clearly confused, until she reaches for his belt and--damn her arthritis.  She hates not having the proper use of her hands anymore--loosens it, unbuttons and unzips his pants, and tugs him loose from his underwear.  Once, he would have already been hard, but those years are long past, and she'd learned long ago not to take his flaccidness as a sign of disinterest.  Instead, she nudges him with her shoulders until he's lying on his side and she lies down on hers and takes him into her mouth.

"Jesus, Rey," he groans.  "Your gums."

She smiles around him.  He's getting stiff.  More quickly than usual.  It's almost like he's sixty again.  He reaches a hand between her legs and begins to rub that well-worn path that will bring her to the edge just as surely as it did when she was twenty.  

And just like when she was twenty, he's off in her mouth in thirty seconds, with a groaned, "Fuck.  Fuck," that speaks both to his pleasure and also his frustration that it's already over.  She grins as she sits up and creaks her way towards curling up next to him.  She kisses him, and he murmurs, "Love you," into her lips, and she sighs as he turns his attention back to his hand between her legs.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed these, come say hi over on my [pillowfort](http://pillowfort.io/crossingwinter) and my [twitter](https://twitter.com/crossing_winter)!
> 
> Update May 30 2018: There've been some additions to the [Accidental Pregnancy AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13229922/chapters/30499020)
> 
> Update July 21, 2018: There've been some additions to the [Coffe Shop AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13229922/chapters/31093341)


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